Addicted to Attention?
Social Media for Athletes. Part 2.
Last week we touched on the perils of social media, as we discussed the potential benefits but also the implications of social media on the athlete experience. While social media can serve as a tool of connection, it can also serve as a tool of unwarranted feedback and an avenue of comparison. The cliché term, “Comparison is the thief of joy” is one that should automatically be paralleled with the student-athlete experience. Unlike other disciplines, athletics is one where comparison is inevitable as you are being compared your entire career. In high school you are evaluated by college scouts and are compared to your athlete peers, and this goes on for the rest of your career. In college your coaches compare your performance with your teammates on the depth chart to determine who will become the starter. If you are lucky enough to receive professional opportunities, you are compared to the top athletes in your sport around the world.
Comparison won’t go away or change, but your perception of how you see comparison can.
From a social media lens, comparison may come in evaluating your engagement versus other athletes and friends as you compare how many likes and shares you may get on a post versus another athlete or peer. When utilizing social media, how you see your engagement and social media interactions matters because at the root you must realize what your motivation is behind using them. Is it purpose? Is it kindness? Is it exposure? Brand management? Or attention and validation? Only you can answer that question. While being validated can be reassuring, it is when you place more value in the opinion of others about you than you do about the opinion of yourself that you open doors to certain behaviors, beliefs, and responses that can permeate through social media’s frail wall. As athletes, especially young athletes, it is easy to fall into the trap of “me” or as Pat Riley (Hall of Fame NBA Coach and Executive) calls it, “the disease of me”.
Social media is a great tool, and attention is undoubtedly a good thing, but you must realize that the same attention you may be getting can go away or turn negative in a heartbeat. As athletes, we live in glass houses, and when it is raining, you and everyone else will know. Without a doubt, people will comment. It is very well possible to be addicted to social media attention, as it may fuel you and give you the value and validation you need but when you live by the highs, you drown in the lows. Appreciating attention and being grateful for your moment should be the focus, and not perceiving attention as an ego booster because that will slowly become a feeling you chase. Attention can be a positive measure that you use to leverage for future opportunities but when it becomes something that brings you value instead of seeing the value in it, that is when you must refocus to realize your core values and know that you’re valuable whether you get 200 likes or 200,000 likes. Comparing yourself to others is a useless action, when finished dwelling in those thoughts you realize that your life is completely the same. The same time you spent comparing your life, career, and social media presence to others could be spent on building yourself and figuring out ways to self-develop and grow. Athletes, perspective is everything!
William Dwyer, a therapist and self-development guru, states “Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change”. This quote is a simple play on words that can directly tie to what we are discussing in this series. How you perceive social media will determine your experience with it. Seeing it as a valuable tool and not a tool that determines value will be the factor that causes you to leverage attention or become addicted to it. The choice is on us!
