As social media grows as a greater and greater means of how individuals connect and communicate, so too does its potential for harm. With more people logging-on to social media platforms, one’s potential audience swells, as does the likelihood for disgruntled users.
One of the most attractive aspects of social media is how it bridges the gaps between celebrity and audience, allowing people to communicate directly with their favorite athlete, actor, or politician. However, as anyone versed in the world of Twitter, for example, knows, it is not exclusively a place of adulation and respect. To wit, late night television host Jimmy Kimmel’s most popular segment is celebrities reading mean tweets from fans, and while watching the confident, successful, and beautiful brush-off online haters makes for hilarious TV, the unfortunate truth is that many recipients of social media vitriol are not quite so unaffected.
Thanks to the exponential growth in popularity of college athletics due in part to greater television and media coverage, student-athletes have assumed a role of celebrity previously unseen. However, unlike their oft-older Hollywood film studio brethren, the average player for a university is still an adolescent or young adult, emotionally impressionable and vulnerable in contrast to the gigantic stature thrust upon them by the college sports complex.
The combination of these elements has created a dangerous trend that must be monitored closely by university athletic departments nationwide. The volatile mix of increased celebrity, greater accessibility, anonymous social media hostility, and emotional immaturity leads to alarming cyberbullying at an unprecedented level. The effects can be seen regularly across college campuses. This past week, the Albuquerque Journal covered efforts to support beleaguered University of New Mexico basketball player Cullen Neal, who was forced to change his phone number and close social media accounts after receiving death threats.
This type of story is, sadly, far from rare in today’s sports news. With its proliferation comes the question of if and how university athletic departments can protect their student-athletes from the vitriol. Unfortunately, statistics show that simply telling their kids to stay off social media is not an effective answer. According to a Fieldhouse Media poll, 73% of responding student-athletes have a Twitter account, while 43% say they spend more than one hour per day on social media. The ubiquity of social media is unquestionable, and suggesting total abstinence from social media is simply too limited an action.
If telling student-athletes to avoid social media altogether does not seem to be a realistic proposition, perhaps helping them process, understand, and filter the incoming messages is an athletic department’s best course of action. There are many options for social media training available to universities, but while many focus on understanding how what a student says can affect others, perhaps schools need to emphasize learning how to receive negativity coming from the outside-in.
Laughing and making light of online trolls and haters has proven it can be popular television. However, universities and colleges are not typically filled with fully-formed adults, confident in themselves and ready to shrug-off petty negativeness. Athletic departments must prepare and assist their charges in navigating the new world of social media accessibility, not just to prevent creating controversy, but to protect those in their care.
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