As a Catholic parish that wants to reach out to as many people as possible with the Good News, where should you start? How about a place where you can reach more than 80% of the American population (ages 12+)? Or a place where adults spend more than two hours every day on average? That place is social media.
Is social media reach really that big?
Among Americans 12 and older, 82 percent of the population is on social media.1 To put that in perspective, that’s approximately 302 MILLION souls, or enough congregants to fill up St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome 5,000 times over. In 2021, they spent an average of two hours and twenty-seven minutes a day on various social media platforms.2 Social media is a major cultural shaper, delivering content and connection at lightning speed.
To put it in the starkest possible terms, visiting sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is the most popular thing we have ever done as a people. More than 82 percent of us participate in it. That’s six percentage points higher than the next most popular thing Americans have ever done – which was attend church (in 1945, 76% of us claimed church membership).3
More Americans are members of the “church of social media” than were ever members of a religious community. And we spend more time there each day than the average American spends in church throughout the week.
What should our parish do?
There are many social media platforms you can use to evangelize. But you don’t have to use all of them. The best place to get started is Facebook.
Of the primary social media platforms, 70% of social media users say they visit Facebook daily, 59% utilize Instagram, and 46% use Twitter.4
Of the three most popular social media platforms, Facebook is the best platform for parishes, because it uses geography to help decide where and how to share your content – meaning that if your parish puts great content on Facebook, it’s very likely to reach people within driving distance of your parish instead of people all over the country.
