Poll of 2,016 US voters: 80% say the government should do “everything it can” to curb tech giants; 84% are “very nervous” about impact of social media on kids
Survey indicates broad support for stronger U.S. regulations over use of data, wariness of social media's effects on children Tweets: @jessefelder Tweets: Jesse Felder / @jessefelder : ‘80% of registered voters agreed the federal government “needs to do everything it can to curb the influence of big tech companies that have grown too powerful and now use our data to reach too far into our lives.”’ https://www.wsj.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Public appetite for reining in Big Tech has climbed steadily across the corpus: an Axios poll found 55% of US adults favored government regulation in early 2018, up from 40% months earlier, and by late that year fear of insufficient regulation had spiked 15%. The new WSJ survey marks a step change — 80% of voters now want the government to do everything it can against data-hungry tech giants, with anxiety about children on social media even higher at 84%.
What makes the number politically potent is its breadth: it echoes a January 2021 college-student survey where 51% wanted more regulation and 77% called social media too powerful, and it holds through 2024, when Pew still found 78% saying social media firms have too much political power. Sentiment this durable across demographics and years gives legislators cover that earlier, narrower majorities did not.
First-order effects
- Lawmakers get a rare cross-partisan mandate: 80% backing for aggressive action on big tech and 84% concern about kids' social media make child-safety and data-privacy bills the path of least resistance, since they ride the strongest emotion in the data.
Second-order effects
- Platforms' Washington posture shifts further toward preemptive concessions — kid-safety features and privacy limits announced voluntarily to shape legislation they can live with, while a June 2021 Morning Consult poll showing only 53% support for Congress' antitrust bills and 44% ranking regulation as lowest priority tells them antitrust is the softer flank to defend.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — majority support in 2018, supermajority by 2021, still 78% calling social media over-powerful in 2024 — federal oversight of platform data use and minors' feeds moves from episodic debate to standing regulatory expectation, with companies pricing compliance into product design rather than treating each bill as a one-off fight.
The trend: US voter support for curbing big tech has risen from narrow majorities in 2018 to supermajorities anchored in child-safety anxiety by 2021, converting platform regulation from fringe issue into durable political baseline.