A new Pew Research Center poll has revealed that most Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, say they believe social media companies have too much influence when it comes to politics.
The poll, released Monday, revealed that 78% of American adults believe companies such as Facebook, X, and others have too much influence on politics, including 84% of Republicans and 74% of Democrats surveyed, reports TechCrunch.
The survey showed that the viewpoint on influence has grown by 6% since the 2020 presidential election.
However, Republicans and Democrats differ on the amount of bias they believe social media companies have. Republicans said, by 71% that the platforms favor liberal perspectives, but 50% of Democrats said that tech companies are balanced in their support of political views and 15% of adults overall said the companies support conservatives over liberals.
Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have been aiming at tech companies, with Apple, Amazon, and Meta facing monopoly lawsuits.
The Pew survey, though, showed that 16% of Americans said they think tech companies should be regulated less, compared to 2021, when 9% said they believed there should be less regulation.
The poll also showed that Americans were more likely to say that social media negatively affects the country, with 64% saying the platforms have a negative effect and 10% saying they have a positive effect.
Lawmakers have also grown more concerned about the influence of social media on politics, with bipartisan support growing for bills related to various platforms.
Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., have been working together on the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, a safety measure aimed at keeping children safe online.
In addition, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have proposed a bill that would establish a commission to regulate social media. The commission, the senators said, would "be responsible for overseeing and enforcing the new statutory provisions in the bill and implementing rules to promote competition, protect privacy, protect consumers, and strengthen our national security."
In addition, Congress last week passed a bill, with President Joe Biden signing it, that could ban TikTok in the United States unless China-linked ByteDance no longer owns the company.
The poll was conducted through the American Trends Panel (ATP), created by Pew Research Center, from a group of randomly selected adults, and was conducted from Feb. 7 to 11. The margin of sampling error for the 10,133 respondents was plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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