Essay On 1st Amendment

"The 21st century is needless to say, the era of digitalization, as social media controls every aspect of human life. Technology has rendered paper and pencil useless as it has shifted the face of the earth to network and communicate faster than ever. Countless apps, websites, and softwares exist to satiate the human desire for convenience and efficiency, all while serving to entertain our complex mindsets. Social media and its platform offer numerous ways for users to speak their minds through comments and ways to express themselves through pictures. The 1st Amendment in the Constitution “prohibits the peoples’ representatives in Congress from abridging these rights” (“The Bill of Rights”). It ensures that the people have the freedom

The 1st Amendment explicitly gives the people freedom of expression in the United States of America. Users may have the potential to endanger someone’s life but that is the job of other establishments to censor, block, and report, not the Congress. For example, in the Reno v. ACLU (1997), the court unanimously came to a conclusion that anti-indecency provisions such as the CDA violated the first amendment. The Communications Decency Act held that Congress can filter the internet if images or comments were “criminalized “obscene or indecent” speech transmitted to children or if it “criminalized the delivery of “patently offensive” information to children” (Reno v. ACLU (1997) Case Background). The government has no say in banning obscenity as the internet is open to all and is bound to have indecent materials available to children. Social media platforms are private companies separate from the government and have the power to exercise the first amendment without government interference. Therefore, the companies have the power to censor the obscene images/comments on their own if deemed a threat/indecent to the online