11 December 2025

By Silvia Gerlsbeck Premet

Planning a trip to the United States any time soon? Great! Just be sure your Twitter isn’t too sarcastic, your TikTok too political, and maybe refrain from memes altogether. Because apparently, whether you can travel or not now depends on your digital footprint.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) issued a proposal that would require all tourists to the United States to reveal their social media history from the last five years, along with their personal data and that of their family members. These mandatory disclosures of online data would also apply to tourists from visa-exempt countries and travellers using ESTA like the UK or Germany. In particular, this also affects international students, who, as of this year, are already required to set their social media accounts to ‘public’ so that officials can check their online activities before they are issued exchange visas. The aim is to identify potential ‘Anti-American’ views, that is, “hostile attitudes towards our citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles”, as per the State Department. The proposal comes amid a broader tightening of immigration and border-security policies under the Trump administration. Ironically, visas have recently also been denied to people working in factchecking or content moderation, under the government’s stated war on censorship and defence of free speech.

The proposal reveals how your digital footprint is not just that – your profiles, posts, and metadata now determine whether you can cross a national border. In this digital wonderland, what was once playful and seemingly ephemeral is now overtly political and permanent, and you’d better think twice about posting that latest Trump meme.

So if you’re planning that US getaway, go ahead and start checking your timeline. Delete the memes. Scrub the emojis. Or, better yet, dig out that ancient Nokia with no social-media history at all. Other than that – bon voyage!

Sources:

CNN, US embassies must vet students’ attitudes; https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/18/politics/us-embassies-vet-student-visa-applications

The Guardian, Tourists to US would have to reveal five years of social media activity; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/tourists-social-media-trump