Editor’s Note: What follows is an excerpt from How to Teach Your Student-Athletes about Responsible Online Social Networking, written by Jeffrey B. Eisenberg, M.A., Coordinator, New Media, Communications and Events at Neumann University Institute for Sport, Spirituality and Character Development.
Social media offer great opportunities for student-athletes to develop character, connect and encourage others, and learn Internet etiquette that can help them in their academic and professional pursuits. Unfortunately, most athletic programs making headlines for social media are doing so in the context of damage control. Our attention is too often called to athletes’ social profiles when they have posted inappropriate remarks or media or have, in some form, embarrassed themselves or their teams.
While some discourage social media use for this reason, we should hold no misconceptions about online social networking among student-athletes. Like their peers, athletes are using social media heavily and frequently. But, unlike some of their peers, student-athletes are placed in an ever-increasing spotlight as they ascend through levels of competition. It is not uncommon for college players in large and/or nationally-ranked programs to amass thousands of followers. But even for the local athletes whose social followings are more modest, the wrong message can break a team or even an athlete’s career.
For this reason we must be cognizant about highlighting the good that can be accomplished through social media rather than simply responding to the latest athletic scandal to break via Twitter or Instagram. By shifting the focus away from the reactive consequences of irresponsible social media practices and instead illuminating the opportunities athletes may find via social networking — including recruiting and even landing jobs — we may be able to adjust the way our student-athletes approach social media.
Unsure if social media is relevant among your student-athletes, or which networks you should address? Updated trends from Fieldhouse Media, which recently released 2014 survey results on the use of social media among collegiate student-athletes, can help focus our attention.
The survey found that 78% of student-athletes use Twitter, 78% use Instagram, and 94% use Facebook. While Facebook appears to be the clear victor in users, most students who do use Facebook spend less time on it now than they did one year ago. Conversely, Twitter, Instagram, and some other smaller media tools like Snapchat have grown significantly over the past year.
Most troubling is that, of those Twitter users surveyed, 19% claimed they had posted something inappropriate (such as profanity, alcohol or drugs). 9% of Facebook users made the same admission.
These are worrisome statistics. While Facebook has traditionally supported a gated profile (that is, users typically must give permission for others to view their profiles and posts through ‘friend’ requests), a majority of Twitter accounts are unlocked, meaning that anyone can see the content of users’ posts.
Further, social media privacy settings only go so far in actually protecting a user’s posts.
Screenshots of seemingly ephemeral posts or a simple copy-and-paste of a ‘locked’ tweet makes any message a potential time bomb. It is important to recognize that once something is uploaded to the Internet — including all social media posts, whether protected or not — it lives on the Internet for good. That data is “out there” forever, and could potentially come back to haunt its creator.
With this knowledge in mind, it is helpful to understand how student-athletes use social media. More so than older or professional users, youth often use social networks as daily logs without significant long-term goals for those media platforms. Particularly on Twitter and Facebook, but in visual form as well on Instagram and other networks, young users tend to track their frustrations, joys, accomplishments, rants, and social commentaries online.
The key piece of the puzzle missing from most youth social networking is the concept of serving the future. Kids and teens rarely consider how their social activities will serve their personal and professional brands later in life the same way that adults and professionals often do. Instead, their social media accounts tend to reflect their day-to-day lives. (This is not inherently a bad thing, but does leave open the vulnerability of a misguided post that does not consider the world beyond the moment or outside of one’s immediate feelings.
Of course, just because kids and teens use social networks does not mean they are doing so irresponsibly. Those who are using online networks similar to the way just described may be conscious of their visibility online and may actively work to cultivate a positive personal image.
Either way, it is useful to understand the way that many student-athletes use their social media accounts. For those who engage in online social networking irresponsibly, there have been numerous document stories in which student-athletes’ inappropriate posts have cost them starting spots on teams, membership on their teams altogether, and even suspensions from their schools. (See the ‘Additional Resources’ section the end of our full eBook for some examples of social media consequences for student-athletes.)
Social media are public media, and what may seem to be a slight slip-up can have big consequences. This is why it is so important for student-athletes to responsibly represent themselves and their teams, families, and schools.
This is also why the Neumann University Institute for Sport, Spirituality and Character Development decided to tackle this topic. We recognize that student-athletes in any educational setting are placed in a unique spotlight, and thus also have unique challenges and opportunities as community figures. In our work with student-athletes, we strive to develop a greater awareness of self and others so students are able to develop and strengthen their leadership, communication, and team-building skills. We see social media training as an important element in developing those skills.
This is all just a small part of our new eBook: How to teach student-athletes about responsible online social networking. In the full book we provide a crash course on the major social networks; a look at the potential negative side effects of irresponsible social networking; new opportunities athletes can gain to elevate themselves and their teammates through effective social media use; and a package of four team exercises and four program ideas you can use as social media training tools with your student-athletes.
The eBook is available as a free download at http://bit.ly/1yR1aMS. We hope it will help you develop a positive, healthy knowledge of responsible and effective social networking within your athletic program. Learn more about the Neumann University Institute for Sport, Spirituality and Character Development at http://www.isscd.org.
