The National Speech Index (NSI) is a quarterly poll designed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and conducted by the Dartmouth Polarization Research Lab to track Americans' changing attitudes and beliefs about free speech.
The April 2026 edition asked 1,000 respondents about who they trust to oversee social media use by children.
Seventy-nine percent of Americans expressed low trust in social media companies, including a majority (55%) who said they had no trust at all. The federal government was not far behind, with 73% of Americans expressing little or no trust.
Sixty-nine percent of Americans trusted parents at least somewhat, along with 56% of teachers.
"Ultimately, decisions about children's online activity are best left to parents, not politicians," summarized Angela Erickson, FIRE's vice president of research.
The research comes at a time when countries and state governments are talking about restrictions for children on social media, and Sean Stevens, chief researcher for FIRE, thinks this poll should give them pause.
"It looks like a decision to step in might alienate a significant portion of their constituents," Stevens tells AFN. "The support for parents is across the aisle in terms of political beliefs; liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans—they're all saying in fairly equal percentages they trust parents more."
He points out that allowing government clearance in one area allows the potential for government to do other things.
"Yes, you're doing something for the benefit of children, but those laws can reverberate and wind up restricting [adults'] speech or access to things," the researcher warns.
Americans also expressed in the April NSI a high level of concern about the federal government pressuring tech companies for access to their products so they can be used for mass surveillance, and respondents were equally concerned about the federal government pressuring media organizations to report news about foreign affairs in a favorable way (72%), pressuring social media companies to suppress the posting of certain viewpoints (75%), and pressuring platforms to remove videos because of the viewpoints expressed (74%).
