What’s Behind Religion’s Mental Health Edge? Study Suggests Faith, Purpose, And Screen Time

Religion Is Tied to Better Mental Health: Meaning, Social Media May Play a Major Role

For decades, researchers have noticed that religious people tend to fare better on measures of mental health and addiction. A new study backs that up, but it also digs into why, and the answer isn’t just faith itself. Two things travel alongside religious life and carry a lot of the weight: a sense that life has meaning, and how much hate speech and disturbing war footage a person runs into on social media.

A research team publishing in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction studied nearly 3,000 Israeli Jewish adults and found that more religious participants started out with fewer problems across the board: less substance use, fewer addictive behaviors, and lighter anxiety, depression, and trauma symptoms.

However, once researchers accounted for how much purpose people felt in their lives and how often they ran into hate speech and uncensored war footage online, that advantage didn’t hold up evenly. It stuck for substance use, disappeared for mental health symptoms, and actually flipped for behaviors like gambling, compulsive gaming, and problematic pornography use, with religious participants scoring worse once those other factors were included. The analyses were exploratory and not pre-registered, so the findings are better read as a lead worth chasing than a verdict.

Israel’s Sharp Religious Categories Made the Pattern Easier to See

Israel made for a sharp setting for this kind of research. Israeli Jewish society sorts itself into four widely recognized categories: secular, traditional, religious, and ultra-Orthodox, and these aren’t vague self-descriptions. They track real differences in daily habits, social circles, and community expectations.

Researchers surveyed 2,907 adults online between February 5 and 24, 2025, matching the group to the broader Israeli Jewish population by gender, age, religiosity, and region. Participants ranged from 18 to 70, and about three-quarters were secular or traditional. The survey ran during the ongoing Swords of Iron war, which mattered because war footage and graphic imagery were flooding social media at the time. Spreading videos of atrocities was part of Hamas’ own psychological playbook, and that made scrolling a riskier habit for a lot of people during this stretch.

Researchers asked about depression, anxiety, and trauma symptoms, along with substance use and behaviors like gambling, gaming, and pornography use. They also asked how meaningful people found their lives and how often they ran into hate speech or uncensored war content online. Right out of the gate, religious and ultra-Orthodox participants scored better across nearly every measure, spent less time on social media, and ran into disturbing content less often than secular and traditional participants.

Religion’s Edge Held for Substance Use, but Vanished Everywhere Else

Once researchers built out fuller models accounting for meaning in life, social media habits, exposure to harmful content, demographics, and direct war exposure, religion’s apparent advantage mostly fell apart. For mental health symptoms, the link between religiosity and better outcomes stopped holding up once those other factors were in the picture. For behavioral addictions, the pattern flipped: religious participants ended up scoring higher than secular participants on those measures. Substance use was the exception that kept religion looking consequential on its own: even after everything else was accounted for, religious identity still predicted less problematic drinking and drug use, independent of meaning or digital habits.

Researchers have a theory for why substance use behaved differently. Drinking or drug use is hard to hide, so community disapproval probably keeps a lid on it in religious circles. Gambling, gaming, and pornography use are private by comparison, so there’s less social pressure pushing back. As for why religious participants scored higher on those private behaviors once other factors were accounted for, researchers floated a couple of speculative ideas: lower digital literacy in more insular communities, and the possibility that religious restrictions on certain behaviors push people toward other private ways of chasing a reward.

Meaning and Digital Habits Help Explain Religion’s Edge

Here’s the more useful part of the story: the two things helping explain religion’s edge, purpose and cleaner digital habits, aren’t things only religious people can access. Anyone can work on either one. Researchers describe them as potentially changeable, though this study didn’t test whether working on them improves outcomes, so that’s a next step rather than a settled fact. Across every outcome measured, people who felt their lives had more meaning scored better, and people who spent more time on social media or ran into more disturbing content scored worse.

Because everyone was surveyed just once rather than tracked over time, there’s no way to know what caused what. Maybe a shaky sense of purpose leads to addictive behavior, or maybe addiction wears down someone’s sense of purpose first. Maybe heavy social media use damages mental health, or maybe people already struggling turn to their phones more. The data can’t settle that, and the researchers say as much. Everything here was self-reported, the sample was limited to Jewish adults in Israel, and the survey ran during wartime, which likely pushed distress and screen time higher than usual.

Religion’s link to better mental health is real, but this data suggests it runs largely through a sense of purpose and how much disturbing content someone lets into their feed, with substance use standing out as the one place religion’s protective effect held up on its own.

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Disclaimer: This article summarizes findings from a single exploratory study and is intended for general informational purposes. It is not a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or religious guidance. Individual experiences with faith, purpose, and mental health vary widely, and readers concerned about their own mental health or substance use are encouraged to speak with a qualified professional.

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