Mormons and the Impact of the Internet
Growth of the church might have started trending downward earlier, but as shown in the graphic, the decline becomes striking in 1998-1999 when several major factors might have been coalescing:
1) The number of internet users had surged to 147 million worldwide and soon would surpass 200 million. By 2000, 70 million computers were connected to the internet.
2) The World Wide Web had taken off, and by 1999, there were some 2.2 million websites.
3) While Google wasn’t the first search engine, it was widely promoted as part of its launching in 1998 and would soon be hosting millions of daily searches. Disney.com was also launched in 1998, while Amazon.com, Yahoo.com, Ebay.com and MSN.com were already up and running.
buzz through saturation marketing and user-friendly software.
Beginning in 1993, AOL disks flooded the mail and were ubiquitous in stores. By 1994, AOL had a million subscribers.
In 1996, AOL introduced flat-rate pricing of $19.95 a month, leading to so many new subscriptions that its access numbers too often rang busy (as many of you might remember). Its subscription base that year reached 5 million. By 1999, just three years later, AOL’s subscriber base had reached ten million and would top out in 2002 at more than 35 million.
So in less than ten years, AOL went from a million to more than 35 million subscribers.
AOL would fade in importance almost as fast as it appeared, but a lot of people cut their teeth on AOL. And no doubt it wasn’t long before some of them were linking to Google and beginning to learn a great deal about Mormonism.
5) Ironically, it appears that the church was celebrating its success just about the time its growth was slumping.
The church had an incredible 306,171 conversions in 1998, which President Gordon B. Hinckley said in General Conference was “tremendously significant.” He also said the number of new stakes (dioceses) required to accommodate that many converts would be 120. The actual number created in 1998 was 81.
In 1999, another 299,134 people were baptized. Yet the number of new stakes created dropped to 39. The figures suggest that a lot of people who are baptized don’t become active members. And, of course, growth slumped growth slumped thereafter to an average of about 1% a year.
Finally, there is evidence that comes from the church itself. “We realize that people get their information basically from Google,” the former church historian, Marlin K. Jensen, said during a tape-recorded Q&A with college students a couple of years ago.
He made the statement based on anecdotal information but also said the church regularly relies on consultants who do public-opinion surveys and run focus groups. Manuals are being developed, materials are being updated, and a new employee has been hired who is “in charge of search engine optimization, “ Jensen said.
“And with good reason,” Jensen also stated, “because we are suffering a loss, both in terms of our new converts that come in that don't get really established … as well as very faithful members who … are losing their faith in the process. It is one of our biggest concerns right now."
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* Southerton, author of "Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church," was an early adopter of the internet-impact theory. He posted a graphic last year that suggested a link between the growth of the internet in Australia New Zealand
Southerton also has discussed the growth in the U.S.
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Sources
Jensen comments: http://mormon-chronicles.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/rescue-plan-to-address-difficulties-of.html
Church growth data: ldsstatistics.com
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