High School Student Views on the First Amendment: Trends in the 21st Century

The Future of the First Amendment survey series with U.S. high school students, commissioned for the first time 15 years ago by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, takes on increasing importance each year, generating a unique body of evidence that connects to emerging questions in popular culture and policymaking around online speech, journalistic freedom, extreme forms of expression, and personal privacy, among other important issues. This research report offers a number of other insights that may be useful to parents, educators, and policymakers as they contemplate new approaches on a variety of pressing topics, from the shape of civics curricula to policies specifying which kinds of student speech should be tolerated on social media. Further, the report provides a barometer of how society is raising the next generation to see the core First Amendment commitments of the country. In 2019, America marks both the 100th anniversary of its first major Supreme Court decisions interpreting speech under the First Amendment and the 50th anniversary of its landmark ruling protecting student political expression in schools. This report explores the implications of changing student interpretations of the First Amendment and how such changes may affect American society in the long term.