Here at British Youth for Christ we have just launched some extremely exciting new research, so we thought we’d sit down with Laura Hancock who pulled it altogether to hear some highlights!
For the full conversation listen to the podcast as the conversation has been redacted and summarised.
You can find the complete research here: Yfc.co.uk/z-a-growing-spirituality
Introduction To The Research
At the moment, there’s a lot of exciting research out there (Bible Society, EA etc.) and it has come back with fascinating findings about people’s approach to church and Jesus – a resurgence of people wanting to discover faith. However, all of those started at 18 years and older, so we wanted to ask similar questions but geared to 11-18 year olds to find out what God’s doing amongst teens at the moment – it’s very exciting and hope-filled!
Area 1: Trust and Influence
We’ve done research in the past that also helped informed this research. And so, in 2016 we asked which of the following is the favourite place to spend your time? And in 2016, the top answer at 32% of young people was outside with friends. Second they said at home with friends and then the third popular answer at 24% was the internet. We asked it again in 2025 and now the top answer is that 63% said social media was their favourite place to spend their time, followed by 61% saying their home, 58% in the home of friends, 57% online gaming, 46% the park.
So you’ve gone from in 2016 that the top answer is outside with friends and then all of a sudden it has dropped down. And so now, the top four answers (social media, home, home of friends, online gaming) are actually really isolated spaces where it’s harder to access young people from a youth-work perspective and come alongside them to love and support them.
But what we’re seeing is that although young people seem to be less physically connected, they are coming to know Jesus on their own. There are all of these stories where young people are coming to know Jesus or walking into churches, and when you look at this stat of where young people are spending their time, you get this really interesting narrative around Jesus working despite isolation.
There’s another really interesting stat in this section asking who is your greatest influence on how you view God and spirituality. Again, we’ve got stats from previous research. In 2016, we asked that question where 73% of young people said family, 36% said teachers and 36% said friends.
In 2020 it was 55% family, then friends at 32% and teachers at 23%. In this latest research 55% said family (still the top), then ‘myself’ came second at 36%. In 2020 ‘myself’ scored only 2%. Church was the third highest answer, which was 35%, teachers was 16% and friends were 20%. And so we’ve seen this massive swing in who influences what young people think about spirituality.
Area 2: Spirituality
Spirituality is talked about more often these days and so we expected increased interest in this area, but I think what we found fascinating was it wasn’t just an increase in spiritual interest. Actually, there’s something about Christianity and the person of Jesus. It’s not generic spirituality…it’s Jesus!
In 2016, we asked which of the following do you believe in? 32% of young people said that they believed in God. In 2025, 48% of young people said they believed in God. And so, in nine years, there’s a 16% increase. One in two people basically are saying they believe in God, which is amazing.
Another massive stat is that 67% of young people said that they believed in either God or some sort of spiritual beings or spiritual forces. So again, if you think 67% of young people are open to a spiritual realm, then that opens the door to loads of conversations and interest.
This is why I think creating spaces for experiencing God and not just telling young people about Him is so important as well – because they’re open to the spiritual side of it. They’re open to the possibility that something exists. On this, we also asked would you be open to a spiritual experience? 53% of young people said they would be and only 17% of people said a direct no with 30% unsure. Interesting.
We’re probably going to need to try and catch up with young people and where they’re at. So how do we encourage it, engage it, disciple it, and lead it as adult Christians when it’s not necessarily our most natural habitat to host spaces for experiencing God and spirituality? I also think we’ve really in recent years like kind of swayed away from the weird and we try to avoid anything that doesn’t seem normal.
Area 3: Church
What came out of this section was different to what I predicted. in the last five years, you see increased contact between young people and the church. I assumed young people weren’t that warm to or open to church, but what we found was actually quite different.
In 2020 we asked the question, how do you view church? and then we kind of sorted the comments into positive ones or negative ones. In 2020 8% of young people said clearly positive comments about the church. In 2025, we asked do you view the churches in your community, positively or negatively? They could literally pick positive, negative or unsure. 65% of young people said that they view the churches in their community positively.
We can often assume young people don’t like the church, but it doesn’t seem that way at all. Through experience we, as the church, have almost had a poverty mindset on how people view us. I think that for church with a big C, that may be true. There’s some more data in the research which you can go and have a look up for yourself that tells you how much the church with a big C is trusted and it’s not great. However, when it comes to the local church on the ground, where these young people are going to build a relationship and rock up, church was thought of positively. In fact, only 6% of young people actually said it was negative.
So you’re looking at this going, this is really positive thing. We then asked if you visited church to find out more about God and spirituality, do you think you would feel welcome? 70% of young people said that they would think they would feel welcome if they came to church. That’s massive.
We also asked young people, would you consider going to church if you’re invited by a friend that you trust? And 53% of people said yes, 25% said unsure and only 22% said no.
That means only 22% of young people are a hard no on going to church if they’re invited by someone they trust. There are more yeses than unsure’s and no’s combined.
Ultimately, we have to ask whether our churches are ready to welcome in these young people who desire to meet with Jesus?
Word Of The Month: Brain Rot
Something that is trivial, meaningless or unchallenging – usually referring to online content.
Eg. That viral influencer posts pure brain rot.