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A majority of 61% of American voters say they believe social media is destructive for US politics, believing that its impact on the nation politically has been “bad”.
The findings were revealed by pollster Rasmussen Monday, who noted that the figure is up 10% from just three years ago:
61% of Likely U.S. Voters now think the impact on politics of social media like Facebook and Twitter has been bad for the nation. That’s up from 51% when we first asked this question three years ago… https://t.co/BkllRKabig pic.twitter.com/NmqddEFj2J
— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) October 19, 2020
When broken down by party lines, the majority still stands at around 60%, Republicans (60%), Democrats (62%) and “Other” party affiliates (61%) all believe that social media platforms have been a bad influence on politics.
Rasmussen also found that distrust of social media is extremely high, with 79% saying they don’t believe what they read on social media:
Interestingly, among regular users, just 11% say they believe most things they read on social media. Seventy-nine percent (79%) do not… https://t.co/BkllRKrM9O pic.twitter.com/dnpZKmJagd
— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) October 19, 2020
With only 11% of likely voters who use social media saying they believe most of what they read there, it means seven times as many voters distrust as trust what they see on social media.
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The poll found that this distrust of social media holds steady across gender, race and age groups.
Broken down politically, 83% of Republicans do not believe most content on social media, while 75% of Democrats said they do not trust social media content.
The findings come amid a furore over both Twitter and Facebook censoring content relating to the Hunter Biden scandal, as well as a Google whistleblower admitting that the search engine is skewing results in favour of Democrats.