- A bipartisan Reuters/Ipsos poll shows 61% of Americans support tighter regulation of social media, with 66% backing laws to keep children under 16 off platforms.
- Support for age verification is strong across party lines, with 74% of Republicans and 69% of Democrats in favor, although many admit uncertainty about what regulation should look like.
- Age-verification technologies like facial estimation are unreliable, often misclassifying users and requiring platforms to wrongly flag legitimate teenagers to exclude younger kids.
- A breach of a Discord vendor in October 2025 exposed more than 70,000 government IDs, highlighting that verification data becomes a permanent "honeypot" for hackers.
- Roughly 15 million Americans, disproportionately Black, Hispanic, and disabled individuals, lack government-issued ID, making verification a barrier to using ordinary services.
A sweeping new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds a bipartisan majority of Americans want tighter government oversight of social media companies, as tech giants face mounting legal and legislative pressure over their effect on children. The survey, conducted over the six days ending Aug. 3, found 61% of U.S. adults believe social media firms need firmer regulation, while 66% back laws requiring platforms to keep children under 16 off their services. The findings arrive as Meta prepares for a trial over allegations it deliberately designed its products to addict young users.
Where the parties agree and where they don't
Support for age verification is strongest among Republicans, at 74%, compared with 69% of Democrats. On broader oversight, 62% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats are in favor. The poll surveyed 4,505 U.S. adults, with a 2-point margin of error.
"Somebody's got to do it," said James Bosserdet, a 60-year-old mechanical engineer from Tennessee who voted for President Trump in 2024. "Is it the government's job? I don't want it to be. I think maybe it should be." Christopher Chen, 34, a Washington, D.C. resident who backed Kamala Harris, put it similarly: "I don't know what the regulation looks like, but something needs to be done by the government to protect the people."
Verification fixes could create bigger privacy problems
Here's the catch: the tools regulators are counting on to protect kids may do more harm than good. Facial age estimation — which scans a selfie to guess a user's age — is far from foolproof. An Age Check Certification Scheme trial found that hitting a 95% accuracy rate was only possible for users over 16, meaning platforms would effectively have to misclassify some legitimate 13-to-15-year-olds to keep younger kids out. Fortune has also reported that these systems are less accurate for minority groups and frequently misclassify adults as minors.
The data these systems collect doesn't stay put, either. In October 2025, hackers breached a third-party vendor Discord used for age checks, exposing more than 70,000 government IDs that users had uploaded to appeal being flagged as underage under the U.K.'s Online Safety Act. Privacy advocates warn that once platforms start requiring a face scan or ID upload, that data becomes a permanent target — a "honeypot," in the words of one digital-rights activist — for hackers, and normalizes handing sensitive biometric information to companies Americans already don't trust with their data.
The problem is especially acute for the roughly 15 million Americans who have no government-issued identification at all — a group that disproportionately includes Black and Hispanic adults, along with people with disabilities, according to Fortune. For them, "verification" isn't a formality; it's a barrier to using ordinary services altogether.
Meanwhile, Meta's legal troubles continue to mount. The company faces a trial over claims it engineered addictive features for young users and could face up to $1.4 trillion in penalties if states prevail. A New Mexico court separately ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a teen mental health fund. The poll found 85% of Americans think social media can be addictive for children, even as 70% say their own time on the platforms is enjoyable.
Lawmakers pushing age-verification mandates should reckon with this trade-off honestly: protecting kids online shouldn't require every American to surrender a face scan or an ID scan to Big Tech, especially when the technology remains unreliable and the data it collects has already proven impossible to keep safe.
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