Over the summer in a social media group, a woman commented that most ex-Mormons leave the faith because they have read the CES letter, begun exploring the underside of their religion's history, and become convinced that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints isn't true.
I responded that statistically, such people are actually in the minority. Most people who leave the Church do so when they are quite young; the median age for leaving in the Next Mormons research, for example, was just 19. The CES-letter model of the temple-married returned missionary who leaves the faith later in adulthood is rare, and the one that does so primarily because of church history is even rarer. (The other major group, statistically, is converts who disappear after spending a fairly short time in the Church, usually just a year or two.)
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