https://religionnews.com/2019/09/18/this-is-your-brain-on-mormon-facebook/

Article by Jana Reiss comparing the characteristics of Facebook group exMos and other online venues (I assume RFM falls into the category, though it isn't mentioned explicitly).

There are some fascinating differences. Here are some excerpts from the article, but I encourage you to read the whole thing. It is a 7 minute read, with graphs and stats, so my excerpts really don't do it justice.

"First, the ex-Mormons who found out about the Google Form via social media are overwhelmingly white—95%, in fact, compared to 83% in the NMS and 81% in Pew’s RLS. Ex-Mormons who spend time in ex-Mormon affinity groups, then, are less racially diverse than former Mormons are as a whole. It’s not an enormous difference, but it’s there.

Second, they are astonishingly well-educated. Pew found in 2014 that only 13% of former Mormons had completed college, and that 8% had gone on to obtain an advanced degree, meaning that 21% had at least a college degree.

In the snowball sample on Google Forms, this was 70%. Seven in ten people in the FMSS had at least a college degree: 36% were at least college graduates, and another 34% had obtained a postgraduate degree (either academic of professional)."


"A third major difference is in how they feel about God now. In the NMS, two-thirds of former Mormons agreed that they either “know God really exists and . . . have no doubts about it” or they “have doubts” but “do believe in God.” Pew, likewise, found that 71% of its sample of former Mormons said they were either “absolutely certain” that God exists (50%) or “fairly certain” (21%).

That is not at all true of the social media subset of ex-Mormons. Only 18% of them fit into those two categories of belief in God. For them, the top two categories of the six options provided were agnosticism (32%) and atheism (22%). They’re also less likely than former Mormons are as a rule to get involved in another religion after leaving the LDS Church. They seem to be quite done with religion."


"This extends to a fourth difference, which is that perhaps the social media ex-Mormons have rejected religion so thoroughly because they, unlike most people in the general samples, were so much more involved in Mormonism at one time. Seven in ten were born in the covenant to parents who were sealed in the temple. Only one in ten was a convert.

They also stayed Mormon longer. In the representative NMS data, only about a fifth of respondents were older than 25 when they left. This is typical of religious disaffiliation generally, whether we’re talking about Mormons or Catholics or evangelicals. It tends to cluster in the late teens and early 20s.

But in the FMSS group, only about a fifth were not older than 25, the exact opposite of the national sample. The social media Mormons left later, often after receiving their endowments in the temple (81.5%, compared to 40% of former Mormons nationally) or serving a mission (45% vs. 13%). More than 9 in 10 of the social media ex-Mormons report that they were “very active” in the Church before leaving it."


BoJ here: Her data on social media exMos sounds right on the money to me. I think RFM is a very well educated group in general. We are very atheist/agnostic-heavy compared to the general population, and even the general exMo population. What came as a big surprise to me was how different the general exMo population is to us/me here on RFM. I'm going to have to think on that.....

edit: I see SchrodingersCat also posted this article. Sorry about that. I didn't see the other post:
https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2256627



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2019 06:44PM by Brother Of Jerry.

It seems statistically obvious that only a tiny fraction ever turn up on these forums...

"We are very atheist/agnostic-heavy compared to the general population, and even the general exMo population"

Nah, they're just the ones who shout loudest.

I would guess that many of the exmos who find another variety of religion would shift into the mindset and activities of their new religion with the same level of involvement they had as Mormons.

I don't imagine they would want to be places like this where religion is not protected. They have their views reinforced at their new churches and church associations and are not really looking for a place to question, explore and work through existential angst.

I'm glad you and Kori found this. I never felt that the population here on RfM is representative of exmos as a whole (education, age, honest atheist views, etc.). It's nice to have a frame of reference.

I resigned at age 64 after a lifetime of being active and definitely believing in all the doctrine. I was not born in the covenant and did not serve a mission but I was a high priest for most of my adult life and I served as a temple ordinance worker in my early sixties. Right after this temple service I began to question the church. I didn't read the CES letter until after I resigned. It was my intense study of church history and digging into topnotch sources that convinced me that Joe Smith was a complete fraud and con artist and this is what caused me to resign. I could have simply fallen away, which I'd already done, but I resigned feeling that my association with the church had to be formally severed.

My question to you Brother of Jerry [and others] is:

Are ex-Mormons such as myself a statistical anomaly according to the article by Jana Reiss?