Athletes Suffer from Social Media Addiction

Addicted: physically and mentally dependent on a particular substance, and unable to stop taking it without incurring adverse effects.

We have all heard of drug, pornography, or alcohol addiction. Although social media addiction is considered obscure still. Shawn Andrews, an NFL athlete, was accused of social media addiction when he was tweeting 124 times a day or 10 times a minute on average. Sure enough, too much of anything can become a bad thing.

Andrews isn't the only athlete that has suffered from an overdose of social media. Emily Seebohm is a professional swimmer and at the last Olympics she narrowly missed out on a gold medal. Seebohm said that she may have spent too much time on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter that affected her performance. A college football athlete, Geno Smith, wasn't able to control his time spent on Twitter and ultimately lost his opportunity at the professional league because he was spending more time on Twitter than he was with the recruiters.

It’s scary to think that something as innocent as social media is able to destroy a future. One recent study asked students to go without social media for a simple 24 hours. Addiction, physical and mental distress, failure, confusion and isolation were all used to describe the experience without social media. As impossible as it may seem, professional athletes are people as well and are just as likely to suffer from addiction.

Perhaps it’s time to double check with ourselves on what is truly important in our lives. As you can see, sometimes the best of the best can even let their dreams slip right through their fingers.

Fine the Fool

One of these don’t belong: celebrities, professional athletes, fame, and privacy. Unfortunately, privacy is not a privilege that many professional athletes get to keep along with their freedom of speech in today's world. The Communication Privacy Management (CPM) explains the constant battle, balancing between concealing and revealing private information of an individual. With the power of social media, this battle can turn into an all out war.

Numerous professional athletes have been fined for speaking their mind. Granted some of these thoughts are better kept to oneself, but others may only be trying to build a positive influence with thousands of fans or showing gratitude towards another.

The reasonably fined:

Carlton Cole, an English footballer, was fined $27,000 for tweeting an immigration joke. A MMA fighter, Miguel Torres was dropped from the UFC after tweeting a joke about rape. Lets not forget about homosexuality, as Larry Johnson that plays for the NFL was suspended and NBA player Amare Stoudemire was fined $50,000 for gay slurs.

Fines for negative comments are harsh, but they make logical sense. Role models for so many others should not construct such negative comments for the world to see.

The ridiculously fined:

“In da locker room, snuck to post my twitt. We’re playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up.” -Charlie Villanueva

Yes, tweeting during half time probably isn't the most official thing to do, but to Villanueva it seemed the same as a halftime report directed towards his followers.

Antonio Cromartie was fined $2,500 for complaining about cafeteria food. Not for outrageous behavior, racism, homosexual slurs or violence. Only for simply stating he didn't like the food.

Student Athletes, Social Media 1010

The life of an average college athlete: classes, practice, weights, studying, eating whenever possible and sleeping. In between those activities are the small opportunities of checking social media and voicing one's opinion. Social media has proven to be problematic for even older and more experienced professional athletes. Now the opportunities for young adults in the college life to get in trouble are, shall we say, boundless. Especially for these college athletes.

“Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS.” - @Cordale10 (Cardale Jones)

This is only one instance of where the on the actual point of going to college for an education is mixed up with the recruiting process of playing sports. Only on social media could the term, “shooting yourself in the foot” be so applicable for an athlete. It’s discouraging to watch an athletes dreams and future wither away from a single post or share on social media. Frankly, it’s quite unfair. There are hardly an schools that have some type of social media class that teaches student athletes how to properly use this online weapon.

Like a gun, it can be used for good or bad, it just depends on where you point it. Instead of hammering hard working student athletes on what they do wrong, statistics would more likely favor those schools who teach their student athletes how to use social media in a beneficial manner.

The Social Media Rule

Nothing is private once it hits online, ever. Athletes are not the only ones that make this mistake, and many don’t realize that what they share or post can’t be permanently deleted. What's even worse, most don’t realize that once it’s on social media it’s now public information, not some secret folder on their desktop.

Athletes Dominating the Social Media Game

Professional athletes are now intertwined with social media, connecting with fans and sharing their day to day lives is considered a normal thing. This is supposed to be a great opportunity for a sports community and fans to all mingle and bring another up. Unfortunately, not everyone used social media for good. When comparing threats and insults to strict organizational rules that change every other month, it’s hard for anyone to keep their profiles “perfect”.

“ Back to 500. Yess!!!! “500” means where doing good. Way to Play Hard Guys. “ -YUNGBUCK3

Imagine being fined $7,500 for a positive tweet about a great win that you sent out. That's what happened with Jennings, apparently there’s a violation hidden in the fine print. Events like this are ridiculous and only take away from the greatness of the game.

Later Jennings tweeted, “I understand I got fined, but 7500? For being happy over a win, you would of thought I said something bad. I mean it was a big win for us.”

With all these terms and conditions on when an athlete can use their own personal account, they lost their own freedom of speech. They’re no longer able to hold their own identity which could be extremely frustrating.

On the other hand, there are athletes out there with such a strong and loyal fan base that it is basically a sense of power over even millions of other people. Kobe Bryant has built a throne of more than 17 million fans on Facebook and more than three million on Twitter. That is one athlete reaching a large portion of Americans. On a more worldwide sport, the legendary soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo has acquired almost 100 million fans on Facebook and Twitter combined!

When considering these social media giants, perhaps the basic and original meaning behind rules for social media wasn't a bad thing. Attempting to manage these posts that influence such a large audience is a fair or safe idea. Although it’s sad to think that the search of finding the perfect balance of power and freedom of speech for these athletes may be a never ending chase.

Sports Gambling Never Stops

The Super Bowl of the sports gambling, it’s called March Madness. Where dreams are made and gambling addictions are born. Although it only boosts Vegas gambling commission from $80 million to $90 million, there’s an estimated $7 billion spent illegally by friends, family, workplace, online and anywhere else imaginable. Vegas doesn't complain though, the city is almost completely booked out with an average 97.7% occupancy rate during the last weeks of March Madness.

Even though the NCAA aggressively acts against the popular betting season, the gambling continues to grow.

“Sports wagering can be a serious crime that threatens the well-being of student-athletes and the integrity of the game.” -NCAA

It’s grown so much that is been debated as a gambling event even more than a sporting event! There are countless tips and tricks for gamblers to get the most out of the March Madness. Statistics are built up over decades, fan favorites are promoted to the fullest and some are simply trying to get lucky like everyone else.

As most of the gambling from March Madness is between friends, co-workers, or other similar situations, it tends to become an appealing social activity for others to join in. Some have even labeled March Madness gambling as a “gate-way” gambling problem.

For the love of the game, I sincerely pray that the forces of gambling does not interfere with the meaning of what makes sports so great. Especially for such young adults performing for millions of Americans, corrupting the game is ultimately, corrupting the players.

Always rooting for the Cinderella team.