If you’re a cultural conservative, a new Pew Research study offers both decidedly positive and decidedly negative hints of what the future holds. Positive because Pew found that Millennials don’t think much of the news media; negative because they don’t like religious institutions much better.
In a January 4 piece, Pew noted that “55% [of Millennials] now say churches have a positive impact on the country compared with five years ago, when nearly three-quarters (73%) said this.”
Meanwhile, just 27% of Millennials believe the news media has a “positive impact, compared with 26% of Xers and Silents and 23% of Boomers.”
Neither of these trends is surprising. Millennials are the prime consumers of pop culture products – from sports to music videos to sitcoms, which means they’re steeped in an aggressive secularism. Nobody is the target of more elite cultural scorn in 2016 than believing Christians, people who want to pray for the victims of tragedies or thank God for anything, or Catholics who are, ya know, Catholic.
On the other hand, the news media has continued its slow suicide. From the Rolling Stone rape hoax to Brian Williams’ action hero fantasies to CNBC’s GOP debate hit-job (not to mention the nonstop fawning PR work on behalf of a failed administration), the press can’t seem to help giving consumers reason to ignore it. And they are. According to a September Gallup poll, trust in the news media has hit an all-time low across all demographics.
So Millennials are right in their views on the news media, and it’s not a bad thing to have young people who distrust what news-readers and talking heads tell them. But it’s too bad pop culture has taught them to disdain religious institutions.
