If you Google “student athletes” and “social media,” the search results inevitably are riddled with recent stories of the kinds of social media disasters that every school fears.
Why?
The answer is more straightforward than you might think.
For the most part, student athletes use social media thinking of their friends and peers as their primary, and only audience. It’s not just that they don’t think any adult would care about what they post. They don’t consider the adult universe in any way, and based on their experience using social media, there’s really no reason for them to. This means that they are using their still fairly immature, small-circle social rules in a world with very adult, large-circle social rules.
They don’t consider the adult universe in any way, and based on their experience using social media, there’s really no reason for them to.
That’s why many social media incidents begin as either conflicts between student athletes, or because a student athlete posts something inappropriate or offensive that is intended for their peers, and adults become aware of it. For example:
- A basketball player, frustrated with a coach, posts a picture of himself making an obscene hand gesture to (the coach?) his own social media. It eventually finds his coach, and he is dismissed from the team.
- A student posts a video of himself threatening black student athletes to stay out of his team’s locker room. In a short time, his school and the outraged surrounding community see it, too. He is expelled.
- Members of a high school cheer squad post pictures of themselves vaping, which reach school administrators. They are kicked off the team.
The beliefs and behavior that underlie each of these examples are extremely troubling and need to be addressed. But in each instance, the student athletes involved never imagined that anyone but people their own age would see or care about their posts.
The takeaway is this: Unless student athletes are made aware that the potential audience for their posts is wider than they realize, schools should not be surprised when these sorts of failures occur. And as you can see by the above examples, the students are not the only ones damaged by these posts. The repercussions can impact parents, schools and other students as well.