Editor's Note: This story incorrectly transposed the meaning of the chart and data reported by the Knight Foundation. It should be read as American high school students "disagreeing"
more with the statement, not agreeing more with it. A corrected version of this story has been published and will be sent in the next edition of
Marketing Politics Weekly.
Support for the rights the First Amendment guarantees Americans is waning among high school aged students,
according to the latest edition of a bi-annual
tracking study conducted by the Knight
Foundation.
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With the exception of students of color, the average and all other segments of high school students indicate they now agree more with the statement "The First Amendment Goes Too Far In
Its Rights And Guarantees" than any other time in the 14 years its been tracking it.
"These patterns are roughly consistent with those observed among college-age students," he report's authors
note, adding, "More research on underlying causes must be done to understand this, although the contentious cultural and political atmosphere during the 2016 election and after — characterized
by emboldened anti-immigrant, misogynistic and ethnic nationalist rhetoric — certainly would be a plausible explanation. As high-profile events such as the white supremacist rally in
Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 and the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in August 2019 (at least one of which was linked to white supremacy) play out, a reaction to the
structure of the public sphere might be expected among marginalized, nonwhite, and non-male-identifying groups."