1. Why I chose to research this subject…
College Sports and Social Media: An Analysis of Student-Athletes’ use of Social Media in Team Sport
Why I chose to research this subject…
Drama with female teams and wanted to see if it was a problem among males athletes too

2. Problem Statement
Sport allows athletes to find their identity and learn interactions like teamwork and unity. However with the integrated use of social media this alters the team culture originally meant for a team sport.
Social media has become a distraction from the sport and in the classroom of a college athlete.
Social media creates drama among teammates and can be a distraction to the athletes in class.
Female teams would be more negatively affected by social media.
Research on this topic is limited because social media is still relatively new to society.

3. Definitions
Social media is defined as interactions with fellow peers, teammates, school, faculty, fans, and potential recruits via online social databases such as: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Team culture is referred to as the shared ways and ideals about team success among the athletes.
This culture is assumed to have been built on the idea that sport promotes occupational skills such as good character, leadership, teamwork, a competitive edge, and time management.
The researcher refers to a negative outlook on social media banning as a feeling of violation to the athletes personal rights.

4. Assumptions and Limitations
Since the participants of this study are between the ages of 18 and 23 and have some sort of internet access, it is assumed that the participants have at least one social media application that they use.
The research may be limited by the participant’s fear of potential social media ban at the university.
The research will be limited by the honesty and integrity of the participant when they take the questionnaire.
A delimitation of the study is the specificity of the university chosen and its examined athletes.
Being that this is a summer semester research project; the researcher is limited to the amount of athlete participants among various varsity sports.
The study was limited to participants living on campus who played varsity football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, volleyball and softball.

5. Literature Background
Themes I found while researching my topic...
Time spent on social media
Psychological effects
Self-presentation
Monitoring
First Amendment violations

6. Time Spent on Social Media
Since Facebook was created it has accrued over 350 million users and studies show that percent of college student use Facebook daily (Junco & Chickering, 2010).
Just Facebook statistics alone show that its 400 million users spend over 500 billion minutes on the social media site each month (Junco & Chickering, 2010).
On average students spend about hours per week on the internet using social media networks (Huang & Capps, 2013).
Research shows that between the years 2007 and 2009 the amount of users on Facebook increased by 200 percent and Twitter saw an increase of 660 percent (Junco & Chickering, 2010).

7. Psychological effects
Extensive use of social media can result in negative psychological consequences such as the relatively new phenomenon called Fear of Missing Out or the more popular name, FOMO (Alts, 2015).
This phenomenon is a conscious feeling of desire to constantly stay connected with what others are doing (Alts, 2015).
Athletes, who feel like they are missing out on what they see through social media, are less likely to engage and be focused in their sport.
FOMO can lead to be an obsessive psychological disorder when the athlete cannot go about their sport without fear of missing out on something.
These psychological effects may be exemplified when college athletes try to balance social media with the heavy regulations and restrictions that come along with being a college athlete (Penrose, 2014).

8. Self-presentation
Athletes are the group most significantly affected by social media because they take an active role in public presentation and share more aspects of their identity than what is typically displayed by others (Smith & Sanderson, 2015).
Social media networks allow users to create personas that may counteract with their actual self.
Athletes are able to present themselves in different ways because the internet provides more control over self-presentation (Smith & Sanderson, 2015).
College athletes are seen as celebrities in todays society.

9. Monitoring
NCAA has no rule against the use of social media; it has been left up to the universities to make specific policies regarding social media expression (Butts, 2008).
The NCAA has no policy and no bylaw that directs the college or university to monitor the student-athletes social media (Hernandez, 2013).
Each school provides their athletes with a compliance handbook that states given rules regarding social media.
During the 2013 convention, NCAA made social media and handling student-athletes use of social media main topics for discussion (Hernandez, 2013).
However regardless of what NCAA decides to do, there are states that have passed laws making active monitoring of student-athlete media use illegal (Hernandez, 2013).
The NCAA is currently seeking different ways to further regulate and monitor student-athletes social media usage without breaking any state laws (Hernandez, 2013).

10. First Amendment Violations
The First Amendment entails a citizen’s right to freedom of speech and expression.
The Supreme Court has not addressed what exact protections exist for online student speech (Gay, 2012). Because of this, policy has been tricky for NCAA to propose without any specific guidance from the Supreme Court.
“just because a regulation implicates the First Amendment does not mean that regulation violates the First Amendment” (Penrose, 2014).
It is a costly procedure for the NCAA and compliance offices to draw up policies regarding social media so the next best option is to make coaches and school compliance officers educate the athletes on appropriate use of social media.

11. Participants
Took a convenient sample of 22 student-athletes, enrolled in a private Southern Christian university.
The research topic and purpose of the survey were explained to qualified candidates and if they were willing to participate, they filled out an adult consent form and the survey.
Participants were currently living on campus and competed in varsity football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, softball, or volleyball.
50% were male athletes and 50% were female athletes.
Ages ranged from 18-23
11 male student-athletes surveyed
8 played football
3 played basketball
11 female student-athletes surveyed
5 played softball
3 played volleyball

12. Instrument
19 question survey relating to social media use among college athletes.
Because social media is relatively new to college athletics, the researcher was unable to find a previous done survey to gather data.
The survey used was created for this study with the help of 2 previously done research studies by LSU and Elon University.
The questions asked were related to type of social media used, reason for using social media, time spent on social media, effect of social media within the participant’s team, psychological effects of social media, set rules regarding social media usage and hypothetical probation of social media during season.
The participants were asked to circle each answer the felt best represented them.
They were asked to answer each question honestly.

13. Questions Asked Sport they played, Age, Year in School
Type of social media they use
Main reason they use social media?
Time spent on social media in a typical day?
How many times a day they check social media?
Has Social Media created drama amongst their team?
Is Social media a distraction?
Feelings of FOMO, disconnection, or stress when cannot access social media?

14. Questions Asked
Do you feel as a college athlete you have more restrictions on what you post than a typical student?
Do your coaches monitor your social media sites?
Do your coaches set rules about what you can and cannot post on social media?
Would you agree with your coach prohibiting the use of social media during your season to keep the team focused? …Why or why not?

15. Results
55% of the student-athletes use Facebook regularly, 68% use Twitter, 82% use Instagram, and 73% use Snapchat
0% of the participants spent a less than 30 minutes a day
59% of the 22 student-athletes check their social media sites more than 10 times a day
91% use social media to stay connected with friends/family, %50% source of news, 32% school

16. Results
Believe that social media has created drama amongst team at any point
Never
Seldom
Sometimes
Often
Very Often
Females 0%
27%
36% 9%
Males
64%
A teammates post has effected how they view them as a person
Never
Seldom
Sometimes
Often
Very Often
Females 9%
36%
45% 0%
Males
18%
27%

17. Results
100% of males said social media had no effect on how they played during a game.
females reported a 91% of having no effect during game play.
73% of the 22 total student-athletes reported that social media was not a distraction from their game and 28% reported that social media was a distraction.
68% of the 22 total student-athletes reported that they typically did not feel stressed out or disconnected when they could not access social media. They did not report having feelings of FOMO.

18. Results
96% of the 22 total student-athletes reported that they feel they have more restrictions on what they post compared to the typical college student.
On average 68% of the student-athletes’ coaches monitor their social media sites.
77% reported that their coaches set rules about what the athlete can and cannot post on their social media sites.
36% of the student-athletes would agree to their coach prohibiting the use of social media during their season.
64% disagreed with having a social media ban during season.
This was the same when males and females were looked at separately.

19. Results
Open response results to the question “would you agree with your coach prohibiting the use of social media during your season to keep the team focused? Why or why not.”
Participant ID #
Agreed with social media probation #1
"it’s a distraction, cause unnecessary drama" #3
"should be banned in order to maintain goal as team" #4
"to stay focused, between games would be beneficial too" #5
"to limit distractions before game" #7
"athletes need to stay focused so regulations need to be placed" #8
"major distraction to the team"
#14
"social media causes tension, distraction"
#16
"to stay out of trouble"

20. Results Participant ID # Disagreed with social media probation #2
"because I'm an adult" #6
No response given. #9
"violates our rights"
#10
"violates my right"
#11
#12
"illegal, violates"
#13
"teammates don’t care about it"
#15
"social media relieves stress during season"
#17
"does not affect our game"
#18
"need to keep up with old friends"
#19
"does not affect the way I perform, keep up with old friends"
#20
"doesn’t affect what I’m supposed to be doing"
#21
#22
“we are adults and should be able to make our own decisions”

21. Conclusion
More than half of the total participants checked their social media more than 10 times a day and spent over 60 minutes a day on their sites.
During a season this seems to be a distraction when there is not much time to balance sport and academics.
More females reported that social media caused drama amongst their team. This supports my previous hypothesis, that female teams would be more negatively affected by social media.
It was very interesting to find that even if a post changed the way a player felt about their teammate it did not affect how they played with them during the game.
No one really reported feeling disconnected or having feelings of FOMO, but this could be because they have constant immediate access to social media through their smart phones.

22. Conclusion
If athletes feel that because they are adults and do not need the coaches to set restrictions on them, then why do they follow so many restrictions like curfews?
College athletes claim to be rightful adults who can make their own decisions but their decisions about their entire day are already made by their coaches and NCAA without them actually realizing it.
More research needs to be done to show if the number of wins will be more prominent among teams that ban social media during season.
That would change student-athletes opinions about a potential ban for the given season.

23. Why this matters
Social media has become such a huge part of our current society and there has not been much research done on how social media affects our interactions with one another.
Coaching staffs and the NCAA should take steps to do further research regarding social media bans during season.
I honestly think that a ban would help better college athletes as individuals by making them interact more with their teammates without the distraction of social media.

24. References
Alt, D. (2015). College students’ academic motivation, media engagement and fear of missing out. Computers In Human Behavior, doi: /j.chb
Butts, F. (2008). NCAA athletes and facebook. Sport Journal, 11(1), 1-9.
Gay, J. W. (2012).Hands Off Twitter: Are NCAA Student-Athlete Social Media Bans Unconstitutional?. Florida State University Law Review, 39, 781.
Huang, S., & Capps, M. (2013). Impact of Online Social Network on American College Students' Reading Practices. College Quarterly, 16(1).
Hauer, M. (2012). The constitutionality of public university bans of student-athlete speech through social media. Vermont Law Review, (2).
Hernandez, A. (2013). All Quiet on the Digital Front: The NCAA's Wide Discretion in Regulating Social Media. Texas Review Of Entertainment & Sports Law, 15(1),
Junco, R., & Chickering, A. W. (2010). Civil discourse in the age of social media. About Campus, 15(4),
Penrose, M. (2014). Tinkering with Success: College Athletes, Social Media and the First Amendment. Pace Law Review, 35(1),
Smith, L. R., & Sanderson, J. (2015). I'm Going to Instagram It! An Analysis of Athlete Self-Presentation on Instagram. Journal Of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59(2), doi: /
Stubblefield, P. (2012). Evading the Tweet Bomb: Utilizing Financial Aid Agreements to Avoid First Amendment Litigation and NCAA Sanctions. Journal Of Law & Education, 41(3), 593.
Walsh, D. (2011). All A Twitter: Social Networking, College Athletes, and the First Amendment. William & Mary Bill Of Rights Journal, 20(2), 619.