SOCIAL MEDIA CONCERNS: The Inherent Dangers of Social Media for Young Athletes
Tom Pincince is a long-time assistant director of athletics at Central Connecticut State University. A former three-sport athlete and college football player, he has been involved in sports for much of his life.
But along the way – especially because he has three young daughters 0 he has quietly carved a niche for himself as an expert on social media, and how vital it is for parents and coaches to educate young athletes about the dangers of social media. Over the last several years, Tom has done presentations to dozens of schools throughout Connecticut, and his website (TakeThisPlayOff.com) has become quite popular.
A generation ago, terms like Twitter…Facebook…Vine…Snapchat…Instagram….and so on just didn’t exist. And yet today, all of these media outlets are everywhere AND the younger generation is not only well aware of these social media outlets, but are fluent with them. Problem is, too many young people – especially middle school and HS athletes — will post upsetting comments online without really thinking through the potential consequences. That is, for example, a young athlete might post something on Twitter that voices his or her displeasure or unwanted comments, and think that only their close friends are reading it. Then the athlete finds out that when you post on Twitter, it’s akin to standing on a mountain top and shouting to the rest of the world your inner-most thoughts and sentiments.
ONCE IT’S OUT THERE…IT’S TOO LATE
There are countless examples of top athletes who have lost college scholarship offers due to misguided tweets. There’s a famous case of a college football player from Elon who tweeted how unhappy he was with his lack of playing time, and made some other terrible comments about his coach, and that went viral. Not good.
Because once something is online, it’s there forever. And too few teenagers or college kids seem to understand that a social media posting can really come back to haunt them when applying to college, or for a job, or whatever.
Pincince makes the analogy that parents give kids a cellphone when they are young and simply say, “Go have some fun.” Says Tom: “But you wouldn’t give the keys to the family car to a young kid without first training them on how to operate the vehicle, make sure they have plenty of safety training, and so on. So how come we don’t do the same thing with our kids and cellphones and social media?”
He makes a most valid point. I have personally turned down job applicants a few years out of college who, once I checked out their Facebook page, realized this was someone I didn’t want to be associated with. Kids need to know just how public all of their posting is.
I know being a sports parent these days is becoming more and more complicated, but please take the time to talk with your kids about social media and explain to them how to be very, very careful when posting anything at all via social media.
