By Eric Newton, The Lens contributing opinion writer |

Each year, on Constitution Day, students and teachers celebrate the most fundamental laws of our republic. This year, they should celebrate Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and all other social media children of the digital age.

Why? Because, it turns out, social media are good for the Constitution. Specifically, social media are good for the First Amendment, the lead item of the Bill of Rights, etched into our national history in 1791:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

“The Future of the First Amendment,” a new study being released today by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, concludes that today’s social media fads are good for that 220-year-old law. As researcher Ken Dautrich puts it: “There is a clear, positive relationship between student usage of social media to get news and information and greater support for free expression rights.”

The University of Connecticut professor has done four major national surveys of high school students on First Amendment issues and has co-written The Future of the First Amendment: Digital Media, Civic Education and Free Expression Rights in the Nations’ High Schools. This spring, he surveyed 12,090 high school students and 900 high school teachers for the latest survey.

The findings are exciting.

Fully 91 percent of students who use social networking to get news and information on a daily basis believe people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions. But only 77 percent of those who never use social networks to get news agree that unpopular opinions should be allowed.

These sorts of surveys are good at establishing connections, but not as good at explaining what causes what. Do social media make you a First Amendment lover? Or do First Amendment lovers just use more social media?

I think it’s both.

Students using their cell phones to text, tweet, blog and Google are finding out more about the world – like this year’s Arab Spring – as well as the connection between social media and freedom.

This year’s First Amendment survey also shows students’ use of digital media for news and information is growing. Since 2006, it has doubled, with three quarters of the students getting news from social media several times a week.

Appreciation for freedom is improving right along with that. Students who say the First Amendment “goes too far” has fallen from 45 percent in 2006 to just 24 percent this year.

But you might ask: If the courts decide what the First Amendment means, why do our opinions about it matter?
Because scholars say the Supreme Court’s decisions reflect long-term changes in public attitudes – and that’s as true for First Amendment doctrine as it is for other parts of the Constitution.

As Judge Learned Hand put it in 1944:

“I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes. … Liberty lies in the hearts and minds of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.”

Since young people represent the future of American public opinion, they are the real overseers of the future of the First Amendment.

That’s why we survey their attitudes.

This year, not all the news is good. While more students now understand that government can’t censor the media in this country, nearly 40 percent of them still don’t understand that. While more students say they think about the First Amendment, most of them still don’t.

And there is still plenty to teach about how responsibility comes along with all these rights.

Even so, when the numbers start to move in the right direction, it’s cause for celebration.

Do we have teachers to thank for recent improvement in First Amendment attitudes?

Not really. Fewer students say they get First Amendment instruction in school than they did in our last survey. And only 30 percent of the teachers say they are teaching it, though 86 percent admit it is “very important” for schools to teach it. This is too bad.

Our surveys show that if you teach high school students about the First Amendment, they’ll learn.

I’m afraid many teachers actually are a drag on First Amendment learning. The survey says most teachers do not support free-expression rights in a school context. They don’t think the school newspaper should print controversial articles. They don’t think students should post things about school on their Facebook pages. And they mostly think social media hurt teaching.

Are young people learning as much about freedom via texting than they are via teaching? Maybe. To their credit, teachers say they think there needs to be a lot more digital-media literacy education in schools. I agree.

The dawning of a new digital age in communications has dramatically changed how we consume news and information. Students are adapting to these new tools faster than adults, using them for networking and news, and now, to better appreciate freedom.

Maybe we can learn something from them.

Eric Newton is senior adviser to the president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The foundation is a financial supporter of The Lens.