A travel expert says it'll be a tough administrative job for the US if it starts asking every traveller for their social media details.

The US State Department wants to see every visa-applying foreigner to provide their social media histories, previous email addresses and phone numbers.

House of Travel's Brent Thomas says 15 million foreigners apply for a visa each year, he's not aware of any other country that requires people to hand over social media details.

"Anything that is a barrier to entry to a country certainly does have some impact, things like when the fees have been raised in a certain country to go there, so any form takes a lot longer to fill out."

He says it could be a tough ask for weary travellers to accurately front up with so much information.

"Because they use social media so often now, people have got many sites that they use. I'm not sure that everyone could remember every site that they have in the last five years."