We have all heard about the importance of being careful with what you say or post on social media platforms. Whether the reason is regarding personal safety or when it comes to looking for a job.
For someone who isn’t looking into the healthcare industry or becoming a lawyer for example, say college and professional athletes, the rules of censoring your social media accounts don’t go out the window. In fact, the rules can be even more stringent. Being in the spotlight brings much wanted and unwanted attention and the necessity to keep your accounts clean is often kicked up a notch.
This may be the reason some colleges such as Clemson and Florida State have issued a no social media policy for their football teams with it being said that social media is just a big distraction in general.
I talked to a couple of Pirate players to get their responses on how they would feel if ECU football decided to do something similar.
Jimmy Williams, wide receiver for ECU, is a very entertaining person to follow on twitter for a good laugh daily. Williams was not so sure about the fairness of this policy saying, “I feel like it would be taking away some of your freedoms as a young person, period, because I mean everybody uses it.” But, he also understands how it would be a way to keep them out of trouble. To know Jimmy as fan or media member you would think of him as a quieter guy but to look at his social media accounts you would see something completely different. He is quite humorous and fun to follow.
Speaking with another player defensive end Jonathan White, who has over 69,000 tweets, mostly song lyrics that fit whatever his current mood is, you think he would be opposed to this rule. But White doesn’t really care either way, as long as the focus is the season and getting wins. “Since we don’t have that rule, I go ahead and use it but as a senior my main focus is just graduating and having a strong year.” White says.
Wide receiver Isaiah Jones is someone who just by looking at his social media accounts, you get a sense of his values such as God, family and football. He does a very good job of sticking to that and maintaining that image. We spoke on that and he mentioned using it to reach out to fans. When asked how he felt about the rule he said it could be “effective, maybe some guys use it more than others, but I think the concept of staying off of social media would be a good thing to do as a team.”
With social media being such a dominant force in today’s world and media, it is no surprise that coaches would want players to stay off it. It will be interesting to see if any other teams follow suit during upcoming seasons.