Secular Socialization Today’s Young Adults Are the
Least Religious Ever
Researchers led by San Diego State University Psychology Professor Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D., found that millen- nials are the least religious generation of the last six decades, and possibly in the nation’s history. They analyzed data from 11.2 million respondents from four nationally representative surveys of U.S. adolescents ages 13 to 18 taken between 1966 and 2014.
Results published in the journal
PLOS One conclude that recent adoles- cents are less likely to say that religion
is able to show that millennials’ lower religious involvement is due to cultural change, not to their being young and unsettled,” says Twenge, who is also the author of Generation Me.
is important in their lives, report less approval of religious organizations and find themselves feeling less spiritual and spending less time praying or medi- tating. “Unlike previous studies, ours
“Millennial adolescents are less religious than Boomers and GenXers were at the same ages,” she notes. “We also looked at younger ages than the previous studies. More of today’s adolescents are abandoning religion before they reach adulthood, with an increasing number not raised with religion at all.”
Source: San Diego State University
Spring Cleaning Connecticut Initiates Mattress
Recycling
Connecticut has introduced the nation’s first-ever mattress recycling program to get old beds off the curb and into the renewable waste stream via Park City Green, a cavernous warehouse in Bridgeport where mattresses go to die
and get reborn. One of only two mattress recycling facilities in the state, it employs workers that manually break down bed- ding parts, separating the materials into giant piles of foam, mounds of cotton and tall stacks of metal springs. All this gets shipped off to junk dealers to be re- cycled and reclaimed for later use in the metal industry or as backing for carpets. The city had been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to pick up mattresses on trash day and break them apart for disposal, but that figure is expected to drop to zero and create jobs at the same time. Connecticut’s program is voluntary, so municipalities don’t have to participate. But because it’s already being paid for by consumers and the mattress industry, state officials expect the program to grow. Already, more than 60 Connecticut communi- ties are participating.
natural awakenings September 2015 23
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