Americans want tighter government regulation of social media

A new poll from Morning Consult finds 56% of U.S. adults support government regulation of social media companies, up 4 percentage points from an October survey. The poll also found that roughly three in five adults say social media platforms do not do enough to keep users safe.

Why it matters: Poll results like this could bolster legislative and regulatory efforts to make social media companies more accountable for the content on their services.

Yes, but: There is a significant divide, often along party lines, of what exactly is wrong with social media and what should be done about it.

Between the lines: That disagreement, combined with a general struggle to pass any federal legislation, makes it tougher to find a course of tech regulatory action that can make it through Congress.

• “I think if there is legislation, it’s going to be very broad, in order to try to compromise and break this really large gap between the two parties,” Ashley Johnson, a senior policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, says in a report accompanying the survey results.