Article Highlights
- Censorship takes different forms (belief, speech, behavior) and is often issue-specific (e.g., required pronoun use).
- Nearly half of American Baby Boomer women agree to some extent that peoples’ political speech should be censored online.
- Nearly half of liberals, compared to only 1 in 5 conservatives, believe people must use others’ preferred pronouns or risk causing them physical harm.
- 63% of Americans who are aware of the lack of hate speech law want the government to regulate hate speech.
- The majority of Americans want the government to censor speech.
Censorship and Its Problems
The freedom to say and believe what one thinks has been regarded as a cornerstone of liberal democracy.1 Symmetrically, desires to suppress the speech or thoughts of others have been a recurrent feature of autocratic and dictatorial regimes.2 Especially in politically polarized eras, individuals may come to believe that some ideas or forms of speech are beyond what is termed the “Overton window,” that is, beyond what ought to be socially or legally acceptable.3 In democracies, peoples’ particular political alignments, and the sociohistorical context in which they grow up, will influence the degree to which they support freedom of speech or thought.
This is all true, though lofty and abstract. But how might social scientists practically go about assessing how Americans are thinking about censorship today? Well, as it happens, the Skeptic Research Center (SRC) conducts representative surveys of the American public on a variety of controversial issues,4 and across several studies conducted thus far the topic of censorship has been of consistent interest.
For example, the most recent SRC survey of 3,000+ Americans conducted in Fall 2024,5 found an astonishingly high level of support for online censorship. Specifically, it found that around 49% of Baby Boomer women in America agree (with varying degrees of strength) with the statement, “I don’t think people should be allowed to share inappropriate political views online.” Agreement among the other generation groups were lower than 49%, but still surprisingly high. We found, for example, that 37% of GenZ men and women (those born between 1997 and 2012), and nearly 40% of Millennial women (born between 1981 and 1996), don’t think people should be allowed to share political views online that they deem to be “inappropriate.” And, though the desire to censor online speech was more common amongst those identifying as Democrats, even still, 41% of Republican women told us they don’t think people should be able to share political views they do not like online. See Figure 1 and Figure 2 below for more detail.
It is worth also noting that this desire to censor online political speech was correlated with other, consequential, variables in our dataset. For example, people who want to restrict the sharing of political views online are 2.5 times more willing to say they would sever relationships with their family members over political disagreements (see Figure 3 below).
Kinds of Censorship and the Case of “Preferred Pronouns”
Of course, peoples’ attitudes about censorship vary based on what it is being censored, as evidenced in Figure 4 below, drawn from the 2020 Civil Unrest and Presidential Election Study.6 Overall, the vast majority of men and women in America agreed that people should be able to believe whatever they want, even if others think the beliefs are harmful; so, the great majority of Americans support freedom of belief. Things change, however, when you ask people whether others should have the freedom to say whatever they want (even if others find it harmful).
While about 61% of men agreed that people should be allowed to say whatever they want, only 45% of women did. This is a substantial gap, indicating that, on average, men are more supportive of unrestricted speech than are women. Opinions change even more when people are asked about whether others should be allowed to do whatever they want. Here, only 40% of men agree along with 22% of women. Clearly, Americans are more likely to agree that behavior should be restricted relative to speech or thought. The difference between women’s and men’s agreement here likely has to do with sex differences in the types of beliefs, behaviors or speech which come to mind when answering the question.
In another study,7 we looked closer at how attitudes about speech differ across political affiliations. We found that, on average, Democrats, Republicans and Independents all agreed that “reality is determined by the words we use,” and that, “people can cause severe physical harm with the words they use.” See Figure 5 below.
When it came to a particular political issue, however, attitudes began to diverge. Specifically, when we asked people how much they agree or disagree with the statement, “not using someone’s preferred pronouns leads to physical harm against LGBTQ people,” Republicans and Independents tended to disagree (especially Republicans), while Democrats tended to agree slightly. So, while people across the political aisle tended to agree that people can cause “severe physical harm” with their words, Republicans and Independents did not think this necessitated the use of special pronouns for people.
Why might this be? This may be due to Republicans and Independents interpreting demands for special pronouns usage as a form of compelled speech. That is, they may interpret “preferred pronouns” as LGBTQ-identified people attempting to exert an unnecessary and intrusive control over how others speak about them. On the other hand, Democrats might not see preferred pronouns as compelled speech; they might instead see preferred pronouns as a form of social etiquette because they think LGBTQ-identified people have a civil right to not be “misgendered.”
Overall, as depicted in Figure 6 below, just under half (49%) of those identifying as politically liberal agree that “not using someone’s preferred pronouns leads to physical harm against the LGBTQ community,” compared to only 32% of moderates and 20% of conservatives.
Hate Speech Laws and Censorship Attitudes
As we’ve seen so far, a large percentage of Americans want online speech to be censored. And, in general, while most people are fine with others having freedom of belief, they are less supportive of freedom of speech and especially of behavior. A majority of men in the survey (61%) supported freedom of speech (even if that speech is regarded as harmful by others) as did 45% of women. Support for freedom of behavior was lowest, with 41% of men and only 22% of women telling us that people should be able to do whatever they want even if others find it harmful.
However, when we focused in on one particular controversial issue, the necessity of using peoples’ preferred pronouns, we see that things become even more complex. Those who identify as Democrats and liberals tend to think that people must use whatever pronouns another person demands and, if they don’t, they’ll risk causing them physical harm. Republicans, conservatives and political independents tended to disagree that not using a person’s preferred pronouns causes them physical harm.
However, an elephant in the room here is that of “hate speech laws.” Most Western nations today have such laws which criminalize certain forms of political speech, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The United States is an outlier in this respect, because political speech is not restricted. This doesn’t mean there is no speech censorship in America—people still cannot make targeted threats, libel others, or foment rebellion. Still, political speech per se, that is, sharing a political point of view which others dislike or condemn, is entirely protected in the United States.
How many Americans are aware of this? Do they assume that their country has hate speech laws because of how common they are in other countries? Or, do Americans simply presume their country has hate speech laws because of how satisfying it feels to criminalize and restrict the behavior of others we don’t like? Because, after all, the desire to censor speech applies not just to sharing posts online, or to LGBTQ pronouns, but to a variety of topics spanning race, sex, medicine, criminal justice and many other topics. So, do Americans erroneously assume that America has hate speech laws?
They do. In the most recent SRC study,8 we provided people with the statement, “The United States Constitution has laws against hate speech,” and asked them whether this statement was “true” or “false” (see Figure 7 below). Over 60% GenZ, Millennial, and GenX women told us that this statement was true—that the U.S. constitution does have hate speech laws (again, it does not). Just under half of men in these generations told us this statement was true. Baby Boomer men were the most accurate, with only around 39% believing that the U.S. constitution has hate speech laws.
Even more telling, overwhelming majorities of Americans also agreed that “the government should be doing more to stop hate speech” (see Figure 8 below). For example, an astonishing 80% of Baby Boomer women and 67% of Baby Boomer men agreed that the government should be doing more to stop hate speech. This means that desires for increased censorship of hate speech are common even amongst Baby Boomers, who tended to be better informed about the non-existence of hate speech laws. In other words, even those Americans who are aware that the U.S. lacks hate speech laws would nevertheless prefer we had them. In fact, as depicted in Figure 9 below, 63% of those aware of the lack of hate speech laws in the U.S. constitution told us that the government should be doing more to stop hate speech.
We’ll end on a final point, which will bring us full circle. Believing America has hate speech laws (when it doesn’t) could be a reason why some Americans are more censorious regarding speech than others. It might simply be human nature to assume one’s country has hate speech laws, because punishing political speech we absolutely detest feels intuitive and cathartic. But America does not have hate speech laws, and it is better for it, though saying so reveals our own bias in this regard.
Censorship is a nuanced topic and one, ironically, rarely discussed with any nuance. Peoples’ desire to censor comes in various forms (belief, speech, behavior) and is often issue-specific (as we saw with the pronoun issue above). What we’d like investigated further, though, is the extent to which people’s intent to censor comes from a false belief, that is, the belief that a given political statement (or belief, or behavior) is legally punishable when in fact it isn’t. Even if so, this certainly isn’t the whole story, as peoples’ desire to censor is deep-seated and reflects emotional impulses for protecting ourselves and those most vulnerable in our group. For this reason alone, the battle over censorship will be a long one.
