Young liberals used to be the most supportive of free speech. Now they’re the least.
Why Gen Z, and this cultural moment, really are different
When Gen Z started to arrive on college campuses around 2013, attitudes around free speech started to shift: Trigger warnings, microaggressions, and safe spaces were the new buzzwords, and campuses started to take steps to restrict what could and could not be said on campus.
Then, late last year, three college presidents from campuses known for restricting speech seemed to suddenly be all for unrestricted free speech when the topic was anti-Semitism.
Issues around free speech are, once again, having a moment. So it’s worth asking: Are things actually any different now than they used to be? Does Gen Z really think about free speech any differently than older generations do, or did?
In a word, yes, with some intriguing complexity thrown in. There’s also the question of why. Answering these questions, particularly with data collected over decades, can help us see if “this time is different.”
One thing we know: Recent college students are more likely than their predecessors to say that controversial speakers should not come to campus and that racist or sexist speech should be restricted (see Figure 1). While only 1 out of 4 students wanted to ban extreme speakers during the 1970s and 1980s, the majority wanted to do so in 2019.
Figure 1: Percent of U.S. incoming college students who believe speech should be regulated, 1967-2019. Source: American Freshman Survey. Note: Data only available through 2019 as the survey administrators have not posted their results in recent years.
Free speech issues are rarely debated when views are accepted; instead, they are tested at the margins with unpopular ideas. Since the 1970s, the General Social Survey has asked U.S. adults about the free speech rights (to give a speech, have a book in a local library, or teach at a college) of four people who hold controversial opinions. These are: someone who advocates forgoing elections in favor of military rule (a militarist), a communist, someone who is against all religion (an anti-religionist), and someone who believes Black people are inferior (a racist).
All of these views are currently controversial, if not abhorrent, to most Americans. Nevertheless, they are all protected by the First Amendment. The survey questions aren’t about what people think of these views (the vast majority won’t like them) but about whether others with these views should be allowed to express them publicly (where they would also, in all likelihood, be challenged in the marketplace of ideas). I analyzed these items in Generations and update the figure here with the newly released 2022 data. This updated dataset allows a first separate look at Gen Z’ers born since 2000, as there were previously not enough in this group who had taken the survey.
The results reveal a substantial generational divide. Gen Z’ers – particularly those born since 2000 – are less likely to support free speech rights for three groups with controversial views than Boomers and Gen X’ers (see Figure 2; the figure shows birth years, with Boomers born 1946-1964, Gen X 1965-1979, Millennials 1980-1994, and Gen Z adults 1995-2004).
Figure 2: U.S. adults’ support for free speech rights for those with controversial views, by birth year. Source: General Social Survey. Notes: Includes data 1974-2022. Controlled for year to isolate the role of generation/age. Chong et al. (2021) originally documented this trend with GSS data up to 2018. Adapted from Figure 6.22 in the Generation Z chapter of Generations.
Support of free speech rights for all four viewpoints steadily increased from the Greatest Generation (born 1900-1924) to the Silent generation (1925-1945) to the Boomers. It then fell for racists, but continued an upward trajectory for communists and militarists – until Gen Z.
You might be thinking this isn’t surprising: Most colleges, for example, would never allow someone who said Black people are inferior to speak on campus. But in the Congressional hearing, the college presidents said that the acceptability of statements calling for Jewish genocide “depend on the context.” In other words, calling for the mass killing of one group is sometimes allowed, but saying that another group is inferior is never allowed. That seeming discrepancy is one reason why the backlash against the college presidents was so severe.
Most strikingly, support for free speech rights for controversial views switched its political ideology. Among Silents, Boomers, and Gen X’ers, liberals -- not conservatives – were more likely to support free speech rights for racists. Then, beginning with Millennials and accelerating for Gen Z, the lines cross, with liberals becoming much less supportive of free speech rights for racists (see Figure 3). Boomer and Silent liberals involved in the free speech movement at UC Berkeley in the 1960s fought for more free speech. Their Gen Z liberal grandchildren are fighting for less.
Figure 3: U.S. adults’ support of the free speech rights of someone with racist views, by political ideology and birth year. Source: General Social Survey. Notes: Includes data 1974-2022. Controlled for year to isolate the role of generation/age. Adapted from Figure 6.23 in the Generation Z chapter of Generations.
Does this switch in political ideology extend to free speech rights for other beliefs? It does not for the anti-religionist; liberals in younger generations support free speech rights for someone against religion at about the same rate as younger conservatives (though this still suggests greater support for free speech for controversial views among conservatives, given that more conservatives are religious). Unfortunately we can’t test the hypothesis for the rights of a militarist, as this question wasn’t asked in 2022, making the sample size of those born after 2000 too low once it is split by liberals vs. conservatives.
But we can test it for communists; here, again, Gen Z liberals born since 2000 are less supportive of free speech rights than Boomer and Gen X liberals. Communists are on the far left, yet support from liberals (on the left) and conservatives (on the right) for their free speech rights is identical among those born since 2000 (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: U.S. adults’ support of the free speech rights of someone advocating communism, by political ideology and birth year. Source: General Social Survey. Notes: Includes data 1974-2022. Controlled for year to isolate the role of generation/age.
In summary: Especially among the youngest Gen Z’ers, not all views can be publicly expressed.
Another question is why this shift occurred. These trends are deeply rooted in the psychology of Gen Z as well as in the changes in the country since 2015.
Let’s start with the country. It is not a coincidence that the biggest change in attitudes toward free speech is against the person who has racist views. Gen Z grew up in a time when there was considerably more attention around racial issues than there was previously. The year 2015 was a striking turning point in what some, including Matthew Iglesias, have called “The Great Awokening.” For example, the number of Americans who said the country needed to keep making changes to make Black and White Americans equals suddenly increased after 2015 (see Figure 5).
Figure 5: Percent of U.S. adults who say the country needs to continue making changes to make Blacks equal to Whites vs. those who say the country has already made those changes, 2010-2018. Source: Pew Research Center. Note: Years are approximate. Adapted from Figure 5.57 in the Millennial chapter of Generations.
This is also around the time that racial issues became much more strongly linked to political affiliation. Among White Americans, Democrats and Republicans once differed only slightly in their views of racial discrimination. Beginning in the 1990s and especially after 2015, that changed, with White Democrats increasingly saying that poor outcomes for Black Americans were primarily due to discrimination (see Figure 6).
Figure 6: Percent of U.S. White adults who believe poor outcomes for Black Americans are due to discrimination, by political party affiliation, 1977-2022. Source: General Social Survey. Note: Small sample size precludes producing a similar figure for Black adults’ views. Adapted from Figure 5.59 in the Millennial chapter of Generations.
Now onto Gen Z. First, this generation spends – and spent -- much less time with each other in person as adolescents. They are not as accustomed to the back and forth of a real-time argument between friends. Instead, they spend more time online. Online debates are anonymous and often harsh – after all, you don’t have to see someone’s face. And if you don’t like what someone believes, you can block or mute them. It seems safer to just not hear certain things, especially when so much interaction is textual instead of in the physical world.
Second, Gen Z is risk-adverse. Fewer Gen Z teens say they like taking risks compared to previous generations at the same age (see Figure 7). Listening to people you strongly disagree with is risky; you will probably be upset and might argue with them. Combine that with Gen Z’s tendency to believe that hearing disagreeable views can cause harm, and they feel safer if certain views are never aired.
Figure 7: Percent of U.S. 8th and 10th graders who like to do dangerous things and like to take risks, 1991-2022. Source: Monitoring the Future. Note: Adapted from Figure 6.26 in the Generation Z chapter of Generations.
Third, Gen Z is significantly more likely to be depressed than Millennials were during young adulthood. Depression is not just about emotion – it’s about thinking. As Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argued in The Coddling of the American Mind, depression often co-occurs with ways of thinking that lead to shutting down speech. These cognitive distortions include catastrophizing (believing students will inevitably be harmed if they are exposed to certain views), emotional reasoning (relying on emotions to decide which speech should be heard) and all-or-nothing-thinking (classifying people into “good” and “evil” – or “oppressor” and “oppressed”). These attitudes naturally lead to restrictions on the expression of controversial views.
I am often asked if these generational trends are rooted in narcissism and a lack of empathy for others. Probably not: Gen Z college students are lower in narcissistic traits than Millennials were at the same age and higher in empathic concern for others. Opposing free speech may be rooted in empathic concern for how others might react. However, the empathy seems to go only so far, usually only to groups considered “oppressed” in current thinking. Some items on the scale measuring empathic concern, which increased among college students 2008-2018, are informative. “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me,” and “I am often quite touched by things that I see happen” mirror the concern for oppressed groups common on college campuses today.
What’s more of a mystery is that Gen Z also scores higher in empathic perspective taking. For example, they are more likely to agree “I try to look at everybody’s side of a disagreement before I make a decision” and “Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place.” Perhaps Gen Z’ers are more likely to take the perspective of someone in the audience offended by the speech (and thus oppose free speech rights) than they are to take the perspective of the speaker (and thus support free speech rights). They may see the offense taken by audience members as a bigger problem than the inability of the speaker to speak.
Another possibility is more troubling: People with unpopular views may be seen as less than human (or at least “all bad”) and not worthy of having their perspective taken. “Somebody” and “everybody” might only mean friends, or those on one’s own political side. Social psychology research suggests this type of dehumanization is a precursor to some pretty bad outcomes, including violence. In its less potent but still troubling forms, it’s at the root of cancel culture.
I’d love to hear your ideas about why young liberals are less supportive of free speech. And: Do you think this is a problem, or not? If so, what should we do about it?