Adolescent Ardor
A formative, family-friendly factoid from a survey or study in the news.
Don’t take it from us. Take it from MTV.The rowdy cable network aimed at teens and adolescents conducted a survey, with the help of the Associated Press, to find out what makes members of its target demographic happy. It turned out that 13-to-24-year-olds who describe themselves as “very spiritual or religious” are significantly happier than those who don’t. About 75% of survey participants said God or a higher power has some impact on their happiness. And, of those who identified religion or spirituality as “the most important thing” in life, 80% said they’re happy. That’s 20 percentage points higher than the subset who said faith isn’t important to them at all. “If you believe God is helping you, then everything else isn’t as important,” Molly Luksik, a 21-year-old Catholic who attends Mass weekly, told the AP in August. “You can trust that there’s somebody there for you no matter what.”
