Every athlete is familiar with the rush of adrenaline you get from competing. Now, with the rise of social media, a new kind of adrenaline fills an athlete as the likes and comments flood in. In recent years, social media has become an integral part of almost every aspect of life, revolutionizing how we communicate, connect, and create. Gen Z especially has populated platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, which have now become powerful tools in all areas, including sports. For many student-athletes, social media is now a part of daily routines, allowing them to reach an audience extending beyond the playing field. But, when it comes to high school, social media can be both a blessing and a curse.
The rise in social media has come with countless transformations and gateways. Numerous school sports teams can now use platforms to promote games, highlights, and team spirit. They also can share important dates, such as tryouts, team meetings, and gamedays, encouraging new students to join sports teams they wouldn’t have otherwise considered. Social media has also transformed the recruiting process, the learning/teaching environment, and athlete’s creativity.
However, an increase in social media among student-athletes can be a slippery slope when it comes to self-esteem. As everything moves online, it is important to learn how students balance the pros and cons of these online platforms.
The Paly community has greatly benefited from the positive aspects of social media. For example, Paly Athletics updates school sports news daily on their instagram account, making it easy for students and other members of the community to support their peers. For emerging students, social media can also be a huge support to connect younger students with a broader grade range and help them gain a good idea of Paly to start their high school career off right. Social media presence increases hype and spirit around the many teams offered at Paly. Almost every sports team can be found on Instagram, where they post important gamedays, photos of the team, and entertaining content. Most of these accounts are student-run, like the Paly Girls Water Polo instagram account, run by junior Maeva Herbert-Paz.
“It definitely helps us gain some recognition about gamedays, and it’s just fun to post content in general,” Herbert-Paz said. “It gives a place to post cool pictures taken at games, boost team bonding, and just create a fun environment for team spirit.”
In addition to enhancing school spirit, social media helps with getting noticed by colleges, one of the main focuses of many young athletes. Throughout the season, athletes don’t always have opportunities to display their best performance, but an athlete’s social media presence can significantly help drive their success. Student-athletes now have vital doorways to catching the attention of not only their peers but recruiters as well.
Social media has transformed the recruiting process, especially through offering an outlet for student-athletes to gain recognition and reach out to coaches. Platforms like X, Instagram, and LinkedIn provide direct lines of communication to schools they are interested in and give them a space to upload their athletic highlights. Senior football captain Jeremiah Fung explains how social media has played a positive role in his recruiting process.
“I use social media, especially Twitter, now known as X, to get recruited for my football, that’s where all the coaches today recruit and contact you,” Fung said. “I know other athletes can use social media to follow schools that show interest to stay updated and help them make an informed decision on what school they want to go to.”
Websites like MaxPreps and Next College Student Athlete, NCSA, are platforms that help athletes get recruited by providing online connections, views, messaging, and tips with college coaches around the country. These platforms also help students stay up to date on schools’ staff changes, scores, and training camps, which helps create a well-rounded image of their prospective schools. Based on the content posted by schools or programs, aspiring athletes can get a glimpse of the team culture and environment. Junior football captain Jake Wang uses social media primarily as a consumer but has begun to utilize it for various recruiting benefits.
“It definitely helps coaches learn about student-athletes that they might be interested in, and vice versa for the players to get to know coaches and schools,” Wang said. “I think before social media was a big thing, all of that wasn’t possible from far distances away, and many outlets weren’t available.”
Social media also allows student-athletes to build their own brand through posting skills, highlights, and other posts about their personal life and progress, which increases the chances of getting recognized. This is true for Fung, who primarily uses Instagram for this purpose. Recently, AMAZN HQ, a news and media platform for Asian and Asian American Sports with 70.4k followers on Instagram, recognized Fung from his Instagram. As a result, they came to Paly and filmed and featured his athleticism and accomplishments for their platform, a major accomplishment for the young athlete that stemmed from social media.
“I use Instagram to create popularity for myself and create an image for myself,” Fung said.
“Consistency on posts is important, you shouldn’t switch up content, and that helps for followers to see who you are and get a good idea of you.”
Another positive aspect of social media is the possibility of learning opportunities from other athletes everywhere. By following experienced athletes, coaches, organizations, or even fellow high-schoolers, young athletes can gain valuable insights on training tips, rules, nutrition, recovery tactics, and skills. For example, Fung models his route by running on creators like James Everett on instagram and also follows professional names like Davante Adams and Calvin Johnson who share content on YouTube. In-person coaching is effective on its own, but it is important to learn perspectives and techniques from others.
“I use YouTube and Instagram a lot to learn certain drills or certain releases that I need to do in certain situations, like situational football,” Fung said. “Like, oh shoot, that guy did something really cool, now I should go try to see if I can do it, and then practice it until I can.”
The easy access athletes have to others turns social media into an interactive learning environment that extends an athlete beyond their immediate team, trainers, or coaches. Senior Kennedy Do participates in competitive dance, and uses social media to stay connected with the dance industry.
“As a student-athlete, I use social media in creative ways to improve my dance skills by learning tips from top industry choreographers in all styles, worldwide,” Do said. “I am also inspired by other dancers who post their highlights. Dance competitions and companies often post videos of their technique and conditioning classes, so I take inspiration from their exercises and drills and incorporate them in my own training.”
Social media is not just a place for learning, outreach, and consumption: it is also a powerful tool for creative content creation. Paly junior and multi-sport athlete Kacey Washington has taken his use of social media to the next level by creating online highlights and edits. These edits focus on himself and other players and uses this content not only to share his love of sports but his love for video editing as well.
Among the pressures of being both a student and an athlete at Paly, Washington uses his content creation as a way to destress. Washington posts highlights and edits on his personal YouTube channel to showcase his passion and skill.
“I create content for many reasons but a big one is de-stressing from school and sports,” Washington said. “It gives me a small purpose, and something that makes me excited, you know, it’s something I can look forward to because I enjoy making it.”
Despite the numerous new benefits using social media has given to student-athletes, it can come with a lot of significant risks, especially to the mind and body of a growing teenager. The constant threat of addiction, harmful comparison, search for validation, or opportunity for hateful comments can cause social media use to quickly turn downhill.
According to Mclean Hospital, the earlier teens begin to use social media, the more impact it has on their health. It can take a toll on not just mental health, but physical as well, with possible symptoms of nausea, headaches, muscle tension, and tremors. Social media also risks loss of sleep due to spending too much time mindlessly scrolling or watching, and for an athlete in season and a growing teenager, adequate sleep is vital to performance and health.
“I view content a lot and enjoy it, but sometimes, it gets carried away late into the night and I’m still watching it, and when I wake up, I have lost a ton of sleep,” Washington said. “During practice, I’m slower, tired, and I lag behind. I’ll think about a motion through my body, and I’m just so tired that it takes an extra emotional process for me to actually do it, affecting my performance.”
The most prevalent challenge social media has created is the risk of distraction and addiction, getting in the way of an athlete’s productivity. With endless options of content, from TikTok to YouTube, it is easy to spend excessive time online while putting off other tasks. A key aspect of being a student-athlete is balancing both academics and athletic performance efficiently and sustainably, but social media provides a distraction that can easily veer teenagers off path.
The urge to scroll or answer notifications can create a cycle of procrastination and turn athletes away from vital training or rest needed to improve. According to a 2023 survey from Statista, the average teenager spends 4.8 hours on social media platforms every day. While this time spent on social media may feel relaxing and relieving in the moment, putting off other things only builds up stress.
“Social media is bad, don’t get me wrong,” Fung said. “It’s a positive from the recruitment side, but for everything else, it’s a big-time distraction. You really have to know when you need to shut it off and get your workout in, or get on the field and get in shape.”
Alena Lotterer, a former Paly student, attends the University of Virginia and participates on the diving team, and talks about the role social media plays in the world of Division I sports. Her schedule differs from other college students, as she has to balance academics, morning workouts, maintaining health, and limited social time. This leaves little time for social media. She includes how her perspectives have changed as she has moved to the next level of sports.
“We get so busy being student-athletes that getting your full eight hours of sleep is really important, which I never really realized in high school,” Lotterer said. “I would just get by with five hours of sleep and keep chugging along and be fine, but there’s something about since I’ve gotten here where sleep is crucial to my productivity.”
In addition to harming productivity and physical health, maintaining a presence online can be harmful to mental health due to the constant comparison to others. Highlights can be posted on various platforms, which can lead to athletes feeling pressure to live up to those they see online that are seemingly perfect images of success. This comparison creates unrealistic expectations and a loss of motivation, as athletes judge themselves based on what others have achieved.
“Mentally a common thing with social media is body image on social media,” Lotterer said. “But in general looking at others and comparing yourself, I know one thing I’ve done is gone down rabbit holes looking at other divers and seeing how good they are, and I’ll get mad at myself or start freaking out about ‘why I am not there’ or ‘why don’t I do that like them.’”
Other mental health issues can be accelerated by social media, including body image, an issue felt by many female athletes everywhere. The relationship between girls and social media can be complicated. According to Harvard T.H. Chan, exposure to videos and photos on social media platforms can contribute to body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and mental health issues among teen girls. To avoid harmful comparisons, Lotterer stresses the importantance of keeping in mind that social media only shows a limited view of someone’s life and accomplishments.
“Everyone will be out doing fun stuff while we are working away at school-practice-school-practice, so social media can create a bit of FOMO, but then I remember that social media is just highlights.”
This feeling spans across all sports, including dance.
“For example, dancers often only post their most impressive skills which can create an unrealistic picture of abilities and progress.”
Another harmful possibility is a student-athlete damaging their reputation through posts, comments, or other interactions that may be deemed inappropriate. This is called a digital footprint, or the data left behind online. A digital footprint can be tracked and monitored by coaches, competitors, or parents, which displays an athlete not only for their skill but also their character and behavior. By putting oneself online, especially with things that may seem harmless at the time, it can be difficult to remember to think about who may see it in the future.
Extended time on social media can also make it easy to participate in negative practices, like hate commenting, cyberbullying, or supporting problematic creators. A lot of these practices are considered trendy or normalized, causing many people to feel pressure to partake. When choosing to participate in social media, it is important to be careful and mindful with every post and interaction. Managing screen time and setting personal boundaries helps reduce the risk of creating a negative footprint, online peer pressure, and loss of productivity. Social media is not slowing down or going away, so managing it correctly is crucial to keeping a responsible digital presence.
Overall, social media has transformed the lives of student-athletes, both positively and negatively. On the positive end, it serves as a platform to showcase talent, connect with colleges, and learn from or teach others in the athletic community. On the other hand, social media can have many downsides, including addiction, loss of productivity, harmful comparison, and digital footprint. The wide and growing spectrum of social media makes it important to stay informed about effective ways to use social media to improve as an athlete without falling into a toxic pattern of overconsumption, loss of productivity, and addiction.
