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.