Concluding remarks

In this chapter, we have analyzed how social media were used in worldview-and religion/spirituality-related matters among respondents belonging to the three FQS prototypes generated in Finland. We identified similarities as well as differences between and within the three prototypes. One of the most notable similarities shared by all three prototypes is the importance attached to freedom of choice in worldview and religion/spirituality-related matters. According to the respondents, everyone should be free to choose their beliefs, and partly for this very reason, many of them reported refraining from disclosing too much information about their own personal religious/spiritual outlooks online. As the YARG survey results indicated, differences in social media use became apparent in relation to questions of worldviews, religion, and spirituality. According to our findings, whether respondents display higher levels of either personal religiosity/spirituality or nonreligiosity, this does not necessarily become reflected in their engagements on social media.

In line with previous studies (e.g. Bobkowski and Pearce 2011), the religiosity of Active and Confident Believers usually showed in their social media profiles, even if only modestly. While these respondents led active offline religious lives, this was not always become reflected in their online engagements. Yet, while Active and Confident Believers tended not to emphasize their religiosity in their selfpresentation on social media, they did not hide it either. The personal religiosity/spirituality of Emotionally Motivated Pluralists tended to be somewhat visible on their social media profiles. Overall, these respondents were more explorative in their social media use in religion/ spirituality-related matters. Although it did not necessarily come across clearly on their social media profiles, in some cases, these respondents were also more spiritually active online than offline. Mainly due to their general disinterest in, or indifference toward, religion, Confident

Rationalists disclosed the least about their personal worldviews and convictions on social media

While some of our respondents consciously strove to limit what they disclose about their worldviews on social media, others used social media as a platform for extending their religious or spiritual identities. In line with previous research (e.g. Quinn and Papacharissi 2017; Tagg and Seargeant 2017), although our respondents reported engaging with social media in a variety of different ways, their accounts highlighted the need for continuous boundary work and negotiation between multiple, both offline and online, identities. The “context collapse” (Marwick and boyd 2011) of social media was sometimes experienced negatively, as it might force people into undesirable identity negotiations. This was the case for Linda, one of the Active and Confident Believers and member of the Krishna Movement, who felt the need to maintain a clear separation between her personal religious identity and her professional identity on social media. However, the interviews also contain plenty of examples of the ways in which social media provided respondents with communal and relational settings that supported their personal religious/spiritual explorations and engagements. For example, this was the case for Inka, one of the Emotionally Motivated Pluralists, who talked about how her active participation in a Facebook yoga group supported her personal spiritual explorations and private practices.

Our discussion also provides an illustration of how social media can provide important environments for self-exploration among people belonging to different kinds of minority groups. In the Finnish context, identifying as actively religious can be experienced as identifying with a minority. Many of the practicing Christian respondents belonging to the Active and Confident Believers prototype followed and actively participated in Christian groups on social media. Such groups play an important role in fostering solidarity among young people who ascribe to traditional religious beliefs that are no longer espoused by the majority of the Finnish population. Social media can also fill a similar function for Emotionally Motivated Pluralists who often reported using social media to find people with whom they shared religious/spiritual interests. For the Christian believers who were close to mainstream Lutheranism, being modestly religious online was not problematic. This was, however, not the case for respondents who belonged to religious minorities (i.e. the Laestadian Movement and the Krishna Movement) that had been the subject of critical media scrutiny.

Future research should continue exploring the relationships between worldviews and media use. Young people today are often avid media users, but their worldviews clearly shape how and why they use, for example, social media. While social media can clearly play a parr in the shaping of religious identities, context, religious/spiritual belonging and beliefs, aspects of social media, and personal perspectives, among other factors, also work ro shape how people relate to social media, leading to sometimes very different uses and perspectives.