Social Media Use of Student Athletes: 2014 survey results

February 7, 2014 Kevin DeShazo Social Media Education Tags: , , 0 Comments

We recently conducted our second annual survey looking at the social media use of student-athletes, or what we call the iAthlete. You can read the results from last year here. Truth be told, we could do this survey several times per year given how often the social media landscape changes.

To the administrators who passed the survey on to their student-athletes, we can’t thank you enough. We had well over 500 responses. This information helps us serve you better when we’re on campus doing our social media education sessions, and we hope that it is also useful for you as you interact with your student-athletes on this topic on a regular basis. Let’s get to it.

 

A few takeaways:

  • 78% of student-athletes are using Twitter, up from 72% one year ago.
  • 78% of student-athletes are using Instagram, up from 65% one year ago.
  • 94% are on Facebook (which is no surprise), but 85% use it less today than they did one year ago
  • 85% have a Snapchat account, up from 53% last year. Snapchat is designed for 1:1 or 1:few private communication (which, like email or text messaging, arguably isn’t social media), but it’s still something we must be discussing with student-athletes
  • 17% have used social media to network for a job or internship
  • Twitter is the most popular public platform for student-athletes, but also the platform where most have posted something inappropriate
  • 38% spend more than 1 hour per day on social media
  • 40% have had no social media education or training. This is down from 51% last year, but still unacceptable

A breakdown of where the student-athletes came from:

64% DI
13% DII
9% DIII
14% NAIA

Twitter:
78% have a Twitter account
35% check it 5 times or less per day without tweeting
37% check it more than 10 times per day
87% tweet 5 times or less per day
76% have between 100 and 500 followers
11% have more than 500 followers
67% have a public account
7% have shared personal info on Twitter (phone #, email address, etc)
18% have tweeted something inappropriate (drugs, alcohol, sexual, racial, profanity, etc)
6% have received hateful/critical tweets from fans, 72% of them responded

Facebook:
94% have Facebook
85% use it less today than they did a year ago
77% check it less than 5 times per day without posting
99% post less than 5 times per day
40% have between 100-500 friends on FB
58% have more than 500 friends
9% have posted something inappropriate (profanity, alcohol, drugs, sexual, racial, violence, etc)
91% utilize the privacy settings on Facebook

Instagram:
78% have an Instagram account
63% have a private account
36% check it between 5-10 times per day w/out posting
32% check it more than 10 times per day
98% post less than 5 times per day
5% have posted something inappropriate (drugs, nudity, alcohol, racial, violence, etc)

Snapchat:
85% have a Snapchat account
44% send less than 5 snaps per day
24% send more than 10 per day
10% have sent an inappropriate snap (profanity, nudity, drugs, etc)
5% have sent snaps to a stranger
49% have received snaps from a stranger

Other:
8% have checked social media during one of their games
5% have posted to social media during one of their games
2% have engaged in a romantic relationship online
41% have met somebody in person that they first interacted with online
17% have used social media to network/connect for a job or internship
40% have had no social media training
52% have had 1-3 hours of training
11% use LinkedIn
7% use Tumblr
13% use Google+
38% spend more than 1 hour per day on social media
21% spend less than 30 minutes per day on social media

 

Fieldhouse Media is a firm dedicated to helping student-athletes and coaches use social media in a positive, appropriate way through education and monitoring. To find out more about us or to join the over 50 schools utilizing our services for their athletic department, contact us today.

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