"Social media is not the place to go to find your worth in life"
As social media continues to become more and more engrained in our culture, and we see more and more programs craft creative ways to engage with their fan base, it's also important to take some inventory on the darker side of social media in sports because the reality is that our players, and many of our fellow coaches, have likely seen the negative side of the coin as well.
Mental health continues to be an increasingly important initiative for a lot of athletic departments at the college level as well, and ADU from D1Ticker had Rutgers athletic director Pat Hobbs and USF director of athletics Michael Kelly on to talk about what their schools are doing to address mental health concerns and how that ties into social media.
Head to the 11:30 mark of the video to catch the following comments from Hobbs.
"We're really only starting to truly learn the effects of social media on the mindset of a young person, but you watch them after a poor performance in a game and they are looking up on social media, they're reading the commentary that people are saying about them and they are bringing that into them in a way where they are not sleeping, and we - none of us - had to face that."
"That's really something that, in the last 5-7 years, that has become such a critical part of how they view themselves."
"I love when I see some of these athletes now say that they are turning off social media and they are not paying attention to it, because that is not the place that you should go to find your worth in life."
As a high school head coach, I really believe that even though we are like many other programs in that we fully embrace social media and use it in a variety of ways, how it affects our kids, fellow coaches, and head coaches ourselves - both positively, and negatively - is something that also needs to be on our radar.
Head over to ADU to read and see more.
Navigating Through Industry Change: USF's Kelly & Rutgers' Hobbs from ADU from D1.ticker on Vimeo.
