“To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men.” Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We are, without question, living in interesting times. From #NeverTrump to #CrookedHillary, Russia news to #FakeNews, #BlackLivesMatter to #AllLivesMatter, our waves of communication (TV, internet and personal) are rife with tension. Everyone has a voice, everyone has an opinion, everyone has a platform to shout it from.

So, what about student-athletes? Coaches want to eliminate “distractions” and want the players focused, but we need to acknowledge that it might be tough to focus completely on their sport when they see what’s going on in the world – good and bad.

It is August 1, 2016. That means NCAA Bylaw 13.10 is now live (note: this is only for D1). What is 13.10? Here’s the breakdown from our compliance friends at Purdue (follow on Twitter @boilerbylaws).

A video posted to the Twitter account of NFL prospect and former Ole Miss football player Laremy Tunsil cost him anywhere from $7-12 million dollars. The video, posted just minutes before the NFL draft started, showed what was believed to be Tunsil smoking weed through a gas mask bong.

We recently published the results of our 2016 survey on the social media use of student-athletes. Thanks to the more than 1300 college athletes from every level of competition who took the time to take part in the survey. If you are a coach or administrator, take some time to dig through the numbers. It’s our 4th year to do this survey and the information, we believe, is really valuable. It gives us good insight into this group as it regards to their social media habits.

Some highlights/takeaways from the results

Each year since 2013 we’ve compiled survey results from college athletes about their social media use. As we spend time on campuses around the country, it’s important that we continue to pay attention to trends in the platforms they use and their behavior on these platforms. The information is also important to coaches and administrators as they are the ones spending time each day with the players. The more informed they can be, the better and more relevant their conversations around this topic will be. We can’t have coaches out there trying to have a conversation about the use of MySpace and expect student-athletes to pay attention. You can see the results from 2013 here, 2014 here and last year here.

We collected responses over the last few weeks. In total, we have over 1300 student-athletes respond. We’ll analyze the results in a later post, but here are the numbers.

Today we have a guest post from our friend Morgan Crutchfield. Morgan is a writer and photographer who studies the dynamics of social media and sports. Find her on Twitter @CentralMorgan. Enjoy!

Social Media can be a scary thing to tackle as a coach; the need to address athletes’ social media usage may be overwhelmed by fear of failure to cover all the issues or intimidation related to opening a Pandora’s Box by talking about social at all. Attempts to create guidelines start to look like exercises in making long lists of don’ts and the ever-changing landscape of apps and platforms seems to create more work and more room for error. But as we learn more about athletes’ relationships with their teammates and peers, we’re learning that a restrictive social media plan is not only not effective for teams, it fails to capitalize on the power of positive social.

While there is certainly value in setting boundaries with your players and possibly even providing examples of social media disasters to prove the point, educating on what not to do should only be a small part of the plan. Because while social media can be a gateway to some exceptionally negative consequences for athletes who use it only as a megaphone for poorly thought-out posts, it can also be an incredibly powerful set of tools to help athletes build both team unity and self image.

Where should you start? Like any skill on the field, wise social media use starts with practice, so I’ve developed a “drill” that will help your athletes understand how to use social media for good and at the same time will utilize the networks they’re on for hours at a time .

Last week we published the results of our latest survey, looking at the social media use of college athletes. With nearly 1000 participants, the data gave us a good look into where this group is spending their time online. There are a few takeaways from the data as it relates to both the education of student-athletes on social media and how we reach this audience from a marketing and communications perspective.

In terms of education, we’re seeing that 43% spend more than an hour on social media each day with 37% of them saying they’ve posted something regret. Meanwhile, 45 have had zero training/education on social media use. This plays out in that 48% believe Yik Yak is anonymous and 41% have posted something inappropriate on Snapchat, which implies that they believe that it is private and pictures actually disappear.

Over the last few weeks we’ve been compiling data on our third annual survey looking at the social media use of collegiate student-athletes (can see the results from our 2013 survey here and 2014 here). This isn’t a perfect science but it does allow us a good look into how college athletes use social media. This helps us be more effective in our social media education and training sessions, and also provides valuable insight as we help athletics departments craft social media strategies.

This year we had nearly 1000 student-athletes participate. We owe a huge thanks to the administrators who passed on the survey and encouraged their student-athletes to take it, and of course to those who took the time to fill it out.

Here are the results of our 2015 survey on the social media use of student-athletes:

Thanks to you, 2014 was our best year yet. From January to December, you’ve kept us busy and we’ve loved every minute. How busy? Let’s look:

• We traveled more than 45,000 miles
• Visited over 40 campuses and conferences in 15 states (many thanks to Southwest and Delta for getting us to and fro safely)
• Educated more than 25,000 student-athletes, coaches and administrators about how to use social media well
• Helped programs from every level – NAIA up to the Power 5 conferences – see direct, measurable results from developing and executing effective social media strategies across a variety of platforms
• Launched Fieldhouse Leadership to help develop leaders worth following in collegiate athletics

When it comes to how we approach the use of social media by student-athletes we, as parents, coaches, administrators and educators, typically fall into one of two camps.