Survey: ~60% US adults believe they can not avoid data collection by corporations or govt., 81% think the risks of corporate data collection outweigh benefits
Majorities think their personal data is less secure now, that data collection poses more risks than benefits …
Context & Ripple Effects
This Pew finding caps a decade-long slide in measured trust. Back in 2015, Pew already found 69% of US adults lacked confidence that social networks would keep their data private; by 2019 its work showed trust is selective even among surveillance technologies, with law enforcement trusted over tech companies on facial recognition (56% vs. 36%)
What makes the new numbers matter is the resignation baked into them: roughly 60% say avoidance is impossible, which reframes the issue from personal choice to structural problem. That framing lines up with later evidence of an appetite for intervention, including bipartisan majorities supporting more regulation of how companies handle personal data
First-order effects
- Companies whose business models depend on data collection face a documented legitimacy gap: 81% of US adults tell Pew the risks outweigh the benefits, meaning consent-based justifications no longer match public sentiment.
Second-order effects
- With most Americans believing opting out is impossible, pressure shifts to regulators rather than user settings — consistent with the cross-party regulation support Pew measured later, which gives lawmakers cover to act without paying an electoral price.
Third-order effects
- If resignation persists across surveys and countries — EU polling shows around 84% distrust US tech firms with personal data — the durable response will be structural rules on data use rather than individual privacy tools, redrawing who controls the public-data permission boundary.
The trend: Public attitudes are moving from distrust of specific platforms to resigned support for systemic limits on corporate and government data collection.