Megan Basham

French prosecutors have charged ex-owner Elon Musk after an investigation into his social media company.

The case has stood out for the division it has represented between the US and Europe's approaches to social media platforms and the bounds of free speech.

Last month, the US Justice Department dismissed the French investigation as politically charged.

The charges facing Musk have also escalated the legal battles between the tech tycoon and the French government, which raided ex-offices in Paris earlier this year.

Musk is facing preliminary charges related to claims of a biased algorithm, violating the secrecy of correspondence, and child pornography shared over his site.

So the long-running narrative in American culture has been that religion, especially among younger people, is in serious decline.

And overall, that trend is still somewhat true.

But this new survey suggests that young men may actually be bucking that trend.

So a new Gallup analysis covering 2024 and 2025 found that 42% of American men ages 18 to 29 now say that religion is very important in their lives.

And that is a sharp upswing from just 28% just two years ago.

And that's significant for several reasons.

First, obviously, it represents a major jump in a very short period of time.

But it also means that young men now surpass young women on this measure of religiosity for the first time in roughly 25 years of Gallup tracking it.

This confirms some other polling data that we've seen.

Barna Group also found a couple of years ago that millennials and Gen Z Christians were attending church more often than older generations.

But when Barna drilled down on those numbers, it found that the change was primarily coming from men.

and primarily concentrated in various iterations of Christianity.

That said, there was a survey from YouGov last year that also found this same surge in religiosity among young men.

It was widely hailed, but then it was found to have some pretty significant errors, and it had to be retracted.

So that's part of why this Gallup poll is drawing so many eyes, because it's sort of settling what's been an open debate.