USA Today reported on a new UCLA Center for Scholars & Storytellers study examining how Gen Z and Gen Alpha use media to explore religion, spirituality and identity. Yalda T. Uhls, the center’s founder and CEO and an adjunct professor of psychology at UCLA, said researchers were surprised to find that young people still primarily seek trusted guidance from people they know, including faith leaders and parents, even as online content increasingly shapes their beliefs and sense of belonging. “Gen Z and Gen Alpha are redefining what religion and spirituality look like in the digital age,” Uhls said. “They have an appetite for authentic content that reflects and amplifies their beliefs and practices.” Read more about UCLA in today’s CBS News, New York Times and others.

See our UCLA in the News daily archive. 

More highlights from UCLA in the News: August 19, 2026

But federal law has no equivalent remedy, said Ellen Aprill, a senior scholar in residence at [the UCLA School of Law Lowell Milken Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofits] — meaning the IRS would be collecting information it has no stated authority to act on. ”I think there is the potential for a fishing expedition,” Aprill said.

The book is a reminder of what really holds us back from building more relationships, said Jaimie Krems, a social psychologist and director of the UCLA Center for Friendship Research. “We expect conversations with strangers to go badly,” she said, “but they reliably go better than we predicted. We don’t think that strangers want to talk to us, but they do. We don’t think that people like us as much as we like them, but they do.”