The Influence of Social Media on Athletes
The Influence of Social Media on Athletes
The Three Types of Players in the Social Media Era
Social media has become a huge part of sports culture, influencing how athletes view themselves and their careers. While it can be a valuable tool, it also comes with traps that can hurt development, confidence, and focus.
Generally, there are three types of players when it comes to social media exposure:
Player 1: The Underrated & Unnoticed
This athlete feels overlooked and believes they aren’t getting the recognition they deserve. They see other players getting media attention and highlights, leading to frustration and jealousy.
The Problem
The frustration itself isn’t necessarily bad—but how they respond to it can be. Many athletes in this position begin making recognition their primary goal. They focus on getting highlights, retweets, and rankings rather than improving as a player.
This leads to several dangerous mindsets:
Loss of Confidence – When your goal is external validation, you’re giving control of your success to others. If no one tweets about your game or makes you a mixtape, you start to feel like you’re failing—even when you’re not.
Becoming a Worse Teammate – Instead of focusing on winning games and helping the team, you start focusing only on your stats, your highlights, and your exposure. If a teammate gets recognition, jealousy kicks in. You start caring less about the team’s success and more about your own.
The Endless Chase – If you do start getting attention, it might feel amazing—at first. But now, you’re in a cycle of chasing more and more validation. Social media becomes your scoreboard, and the love for the game starts to fade.
This brings us to Player 2.
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Player 2: The Athlete Who’s Getting Some Attention
This player has started to gain recognition. Maybe they’ve had a big game and a tweet about them went viral. Maybe they’ve been featured in a highlight video.
The danger here is that the attention can become addictive. Instead of working for personal growth, this athlete now plays for the spotlight. They start making decisions based on what will get the most views, rather than what will make them a better player.
They also fear losing the attention —which leads to stress, overthinking, and playing tight instead of free.
This takes us to Player 3.
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Player 3: The Well-Known Athlete
This player is featured regularly on social media—highlight tapes, ranking lists, viral tweets. They’ve “made it” in terms of recognition.
But here’s where many athletes fall off.
The Problem
Their identity becomes tied to the attention. They stop playing for the love of the game and start playing for validation.
The Pressure to Maintain Attention – Every game feels like a test to prove they’re worth the hype. If they don’t perform well, they feel like a failure—not because they actually failed, but because they fear losing their status.
The “Disappear” Effect – We’ve all seen it. A highly touted player who gets tons of media attention in high school suddenly fades away in college. Why? Because they were playing for the wrong reasons. When the cameras left, so did their motivation.
Letting External Voices Dictate Internal Work Ethic – When attention starts to define success, players stop grinding the way they used to. They lose the chip on their shoulder. Instead of working to improve, they work to maintain an image. And when the attention fades (which it always does), they’re left feeling lost.
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The Reality Check: Social Media is Just Entertainment
Here’s the truth: Social media has zero impact on your actual value as a player or a person.
It’s a highlight reel. It’s entertainment. It is not reality.
The best players don’t play for clicks. They play for improvement. Recognition and praise will come naturally if you keep working hard enough—but when it does, it’s not a sign to slow down or change your mentality.
Your goals and aspirations are yours to control. They don’t belong to a blogger or a Twitter account. Keep the main thing the main thing.
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How to Stay Present & Avoid the Social Media Trap
One of the most powerful skills an athlete can have is presence.
And presence is not found on social media.
When you scroll less, you have more time for the things that actually matter:
Your development
Your mental and physical health
Your relationships
Your love for the game
If you spend more time worrying about who is talking about you** than actually improving, you’re already falling behind.
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Dealing with Negativity on Social Media
Not all attention is positive. At some point, every athlete will face criticism, hate, or negativity online.
How do you handle it?
1. Always Remember: You Have a Choice
The easiest thing to do is fire back, respond to negativity, and let it take up space in your mind. That’s also the weakest thing you can do.
Instead, remember: You control how you react.
Ignore the noise. No matter how good you are, someone will always have something negative to say.
Focus on real feedback. The opinions of your coach, teammates, and personal trainers matter. The opinion of a random Twitter user does not.
Don’t let negativity become a distraction. The moment you start worrying about critics, you’re losing focus on your own growth.
2. Protect Your Mindset
The stronger your mindset, the less outside voices will affect you.
Here’s what the best athletes do:
They don’t seek validation—they seek improvement.
They don’t react emotionally—they stay locked in.
They don’t let success or failure on social media define them.
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Final Thought: Play for the Right Reasons
At the end of the day, social media is just noise.
Your worth is not determined by views, likes, or rankings. Your value is in the work you put in, the way you impact your team, and the love you have for the game.
If you truly want to go far in basketball—or anything in life— stop playing for clicks. Play because you love it. Play because you want to get better.
And most importantly, when the cameras come and go, make sure you’re still the same player, still working, still growing.
