Coaching in the age of social media

School has started at Wichita State and we have been busy getting everyone through the initial meetings and paperwork that happens every year.  It’s all pretty boring stuff so I’m gonna skip the weekly update and talk about …..

Coaching in the age of social media

If you’re at least 30 years old and have been in charge of young people for most of your professional life, this entry should probably hit home.

I’m 40 years old and have been on the positive side of technology most of my life.  My family had Texas Instruments and Commodore 64 computers when I was a kid and I was an Information Systems major in college.  Even though I was an IS major the first time I ever heard about email was my freshman year at Kent State.  I was actually writing handwritten letters to friends before we figured out this whole Internet and email thing.  I started the website KentTrack.com sometime around 1995 and it was one of the first of its kind.  I helped design the original website for Kent State Athletics shortly thereafter.  Long story short – I’m a guy who has always been into computers and technology.

It’s something we talk about in our office on an almost daily basis.  It’s something we talk with our team about on a regular basis.

There is good and bad about what technology has done to young people.

The good …

A lot of the older generation looks unfavorably at what cell phones and social media has done to young people but there are plenty of good things that have come from it.

Kids are generally more informed nowadays because they are constantly reading things online.  They’re more worldly and aware of social and cultural nuances.  When I was growing up I had to wait for the newspaper the next day to get new information.  Now newspapers are heading towards extinction and being replaced by 140 character updates on Twitter and things like blogs (haha).

You can get information out to the public about your organization or team much easier now.  Being a track coach, it had always been frustrating to hope that the newspaper or television might put a snippet about you in their reports but now we’ve virtually created our own media markets where we can promote ourselves as much as we want.

Going online has helped the sport of track and field.  Even though this week’s World Championships of Track and Field is only broadcast sporadically on television, I’m able to watch the entire meet on my computer.  We don’t have the following of the general public like football, basketball or baseball but we have a large online community that continues to grow through the years.

I also think young people are able to multi task better than the older generation.  They might not always use their multi-tasking skills for productive things but they probably have more skill because they are constantly doing multiple things at once.

It’s been great for me to keep up to date with friends from all over the world as well.  Thanks to Facebook and Twitter I still keep in touch with people I never would’ve been able to without it.

The bad …

I feel fortunate to have been born when I was.  I saw everything evolve growing up but it didn’t consume us as kids.  We still went outside to play every day.  If we had a bad day and had to deal with our problems, we talked it out with our parents or other family and close friends.  There was no outlet to complain or seek sympathy from anyone else.

Nowadays, the smallest frustration or problem for a young person goes out on one of the many social media platforms and when adults see this we generally roll our eyes and wonder why they need to vent in a fashion that makes them look more immature than they are.

When you put a negative post on social media one of two things generally happen.  The first thing is you get a bunch of people coming to your defense saying that everything will be ok.  The other thing that can happen is no one responds or comments on the post.

Both of these actions end up bad for the kids who posts the negative or whiny message.  The people who are responding in a supportive way by saying “its ok it’s not your fault” is not really helping the person deal with the frustration they have.  They are merely just piling on and enabling that person to feel better without dealing with the situation.  As adults we (usually) understand how important it is to deal with problems head on so they don’t come back again.

Not saying anything in response to the message can make the original poster feel like no one cares about them.  This isn’t the case but when kids (or sometimes idiot adults) are so wrapped up in their online personality it can feel like they are now isolated, which obviously isn’t good.

Needless to say cell phones have made young people more easily distracted.  They can’t sit and listen to coaches talk for more than a few minutes without losing attention.  It’s not totally their fault, society has allowed this to happen.  Sometimes I feel bad for them and am thankful I’m not that way.

Social media has become a place to promote yourself which makes the user more and more narcissistic every day.  Taking selfies and talking about things in your life that pertain to no one but yourself makes you more selfish.  It’s not a coincidence the words selfie and selfish are almost the same.

How does this affect an athlete?

What we have found is that many, many more athletes now have a false sense of reality as they enter college.  They have received more attention growing up and put more focus on themselves instead of what it means to be a valuable member of a team.

At the Division I level it can be a very humbling experience.  Almost all of these athletes were among the best on their team and state and when they start competing against some of the best collegiate athletes, and get whooped on a consistent basis, many of them aren’t prepared emotionally to handle it.  Instead of looking at the big picture and how to grind their way step-by-step up the ladder they often look for support through social media and a quick fix.

How often to you see a young athlete say “Worst day ever” or some other negative phrase along with a bunch of sad face emoji’s?  This is not the foundation of a tough minded athlete.

What do we do about it?

Not every young person handles social media and technology incorrectly but as educators or mentors we have to continue to help them understand why it’s important to handle it correctly.  As I have talked about previously it’s not all bad and for us to totally trash their use of technology will only hurt our efforts in getting through.

As with most things in life, moderate usage is ok.  Is it bad to have an adult beverage from time to time?  No.  It is bad to become an alcoholic?  Yes.  Kids get “drunk” on social media and before too long they are controlled by it.

Parents need to be aware of what their kids post on social media and deal with it before it gets out of control.  That means you need to try and understand it so you can effectively monitor what your kids are doing.  It’s not going away anytime soon.  Often kids arrive to college and we have to really reign them in before they start representing themselves, their school and their team in negative light.  It’s a life lesson they need to understand.  Employers (and college recruiters) look at the online lives of young people all the time and it can make the difference in the having the chance of a lifetime or not.

Last week we had a meeting with our newcomers and I challenged them to not tweet or post about themselves for a week.  Post a message about a friend or something that is informative.  I’ve already seen many of them not be able to follow through on the challenge.  It’s ok for now because I hope the point begins to sink in and over time I hope they understand that technology isn’t always the answer.

Hey old people!  Continue fighting the good fight to help our young people understand why it’s important to have moderation with technology but we have to continue to understand things from their perspectives too.  If we don’t we’ll just sound like a bunch of old fogey’s.

Next blog

You’ll definitely want to come back next week as I will piggyback on this blog with a big announcement!

Until then thanks for reading -- Go Shocks!!!