First Amendment support is climbing among high school students, and is stronger today than it's been in the last 12 years, according to a survey on the issue.
A Knight Foundation survey conducted last year found 91 percent of high school students say they believe that individuals should be allowed to express unpopular opinions.
"What we've seen since 2004 is a slow but steady increase in support," Kenneth Dautrich, the study's lead author and the president of the Stats Group, a statistical and data services firm, told the New York Times.
In other findings:
- Only 45 percent of high schoolers support the right to express unpopular opinions when the speech in question is offensive to others and made in public.
- More than half put as much or more trust in photos, videos and accounts shared by individuals online than in traditional news sources. Still, 82 percent said they had "some" or "a lot" of trust in the information found in newspapers, compared with 77 percent for television news and 70 percent for news websites. Just 49 percent reported similar levels of trust in news shared on social media.
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