Cross Community Friendships Amongst NI Teens Increase

An increasing number of 16 year olds in Northern Ireland have contact across both religious and ethnic divides.

That’s according to new research published by Queen’s University and the University of Ulster today as part of Community Relations Week.

According to the 2011 Young Life and Times Survey (YLT), which features the first set of YLT respondents born after the 1994 ceasefires, only a minority of young people report having no friends from other religious or ethnic backgrounds.

1,434 teenagers across Northern Ireland completed the YLT survey, undertaken by ARK, a joint initiative by Queen’s and the University of Ulster. The survey gives an insight into the lives of 16-year olds across Northern Ireland and has been monitoring cross-community contact and attitudes towards community relations since 2003.

Dr Paula Devine from the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work at Queen’s University, and co-author of the report said: "The YLT survey found that friendship patterns among 16 year olds are wider than ever before, encompassing both religious and ethnic diversity.

"While we found that 12 per cent of young people never socialise with people from a different religious community, and 16 per cent never do so with people from a different ethnic background, the comments made by young people in the survey suggest a blurring of the traditional ‘us and them’ categories - whether someone is like ‘us’ or ‘them’ is not purely based on their religious or ethnic background, but on other factors such as personality."

(CD/GK)