First amendment of the U.S. constitution aims to protect the people’s freedom of practicing any religion, freedom of the press as well as freedom of speech. It also gives the people the right to peaceful assembly as well as to approach and file a petition to the government to redress grievances.
In a research, John Wihbey, assistant professor at Northeastern University along with associate professor Brooke Foucault Welles, has found that young people, especially students, today are more divided about their view of the first amendment. After 15 years of the survey, they studied the broad trends amongst the youth and how they reacted to the first amendment. Opinions are always contrasting with each other. Yet, it was found that girls and students of colour are more inclined towards the statement, “The First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees” than boys and white students.
“We’re seeing a statistically significant divergence in the data, which tells us something structural is going on with the country,” Wihbey says.
It can also be said that this freedom is also being used in certain negative ways that can also be dangerous. Freedom is being used as a defence for extreme speech and hate speech.
“Freedom of speech is often invoked as a cover for online harassment,” she says, “and we know that women and people of colour are more likely to be harassed online than white men. Because of that, women and people of colour might be more conscious of the damage that can be done under the name of ‘freedom of speech.’”
In their research, Wihbey and Welles have also found that school students slightly disagree that schools should be allowed to keep a check on what students post on social media and discipline students for posting offensive content. The students say that outside school hours, social media is a personal space and schools need not interfere with what they post.
“A lot of the ways in which the culture writ large figures out what it believes about religious freedom, or the line between church and state, or public protest, has been litigated in public schools,” Wihbey says. “Public schools in the U.S. are perhaps the most important site for constitutional interpretation.”
Disha Mazumder