Concluding remarks

Based on the YARG survey and interview data from Peru, this chapter has illustrated a particular kind of Internet and social media use for religion-related issues that emerged as quite peculiar for the Peruvian sample: using the Internet and social media either as a means for fact-checking and critically inquiring into received Catholic beliefs, or as a means of acquiring information about other, non-Christian religions and spiritualities. In neither case are the Internet or social media used as a means to support or supplement traditional religious beliefs and values. Indeed, while some respondents did indeed talk about using the Internet and social media in a “positive” spirit to find out more about alternative religions and spiritualities, most respondents talked about primarily using them as part of a more general self-reflexive and self-socializing (perhaps even “self-de-socializing”) effort to distance themselves from received religious tradition. The type of self-socializing practice exercised by most of the (admittedly few) Peruvian respondents who talked about the relationship between their Internet and social media use and religious views in the first place is thus most adequately described in terms of an independent and self-directed disengagement from received religious beliefs and mores.