A few months ago, I wrote about the early stages of research into the support networks of Irish high-performance youth athletes. The last number of months have been spent conducting semi-structured interviews with youth athletes on Ireland’s national basketball teams, and the people who support them, such as their coaches, physiotherapists, S&C coaches and parents.
Having spoken to a wide range of people across these national team programmes, a stand-out topic to me has been the challenge that social media poses to youth athletes performing at a high level, such as at European championships. While there is no paucity of research into the effects of social media on adolescents’ (1) and elite athletes’ (2) mental health, it has been noted that research into the effects of social media and electronic communication on the mental wellbeing of elite youth athletes are limited (3), and correlations between excessive social media exposure and negative outcomes such as poor sleep quality have been shown to be stronger in competitive and elite youth athletes than the associations seen in recreational youth athletes (4). Preliminary observations from this qualitative research indicate that high-performance Irish youth basketball players face their own unique set of challenges related to social media.
Several parents of players on national teams and the players themselves mentioned the pressure that athletes face from national team selections being posted on Instagram when squad numbers are reduced. The majority of players expressed a desire that they be informed prior to the announcement, in order to allow themselves time to process their selection/deselection before everyone else was informed. One player spoke about the final squad selection, in which their squad was reduced from fifteen players to the twelve who would play at the European championships, being announced during the school day, without prior warning; ‘The cut that we had for the final twelve two years ago, it came out in the middle of a school day. And the first time that it came out was on Instagram. I made it. So it wasn’t that much of a concern for me, but I know that if I was one of the three people who were cut, I think that’s a very bad time and place to find out.’
European championship games being streamed live and the comments on those livestreams were another pressure identified, with one coach noting ‘If you ever look at YouTube comments on games, for example, they’re horrific. On YouTube, there are plenty of viewers who gamble on the underage games. You’ve got people saying horrendous things about teenage girls missing a layup. And they’ve got to watch that and see that and have to deal with that after games.’
The need to provide these athletes with the requisite skills to deal with these challenges was highlighted by another participant; ‘Social media training is probably one of the most important things for the underage international teams. And it’s not social media safety. They get that in school, and they know who they’re supposed to text and not text. You can’t just say ignore it. Because they’ve got to see it, right? So they need to figure out a way of dealing with the emotions of someone tweeting at them telling them that they lost their accumulator because you missed the three at the end or you turned the ball over. Or people sending clips around where somebody falls over or turns the ball over. Or there’s something negative going around on Snapchat. Dealing with that would be quite helpful.’ Another coach noted that there is almost an expectation of negative comments on social media amongst players following poor performances; ‘An awful lot of the young players are wondering what people are going to say about them on social media afterwards if they have a bad performance.’
The ranking of players on social media sites such as TikTok and Instagram was another pressure highlighted by a number of participants, with one parent saying ‘They are exposed now in ways that I don’t know that you would have been even ten years ago, in terms of the exposure to social media and the constant ranking internally of players, who is the best point guard, who is the best shooting guard, who is number one, who is number two,’ while another parent noted that in some cases videos ranking players may appear to emanate from the governing body for the sport, giving rise to further distress; ‘There were a couple of people who were making videos and constantly ranking the players and making it look like it came from the governing body for the national basketball teams and it didn’t. They were using their logo, so I was trying to explain to them, I said, they would never post something like that for lots of different reasons.’
It appears clear that the pressures faced by our high-performance youth athletes in the digital age are unprecedented, with social media intensifying both the highs and lows of their athletic journeys. I believe that it is vital that governing bodies, coaches, and parents strive to provide a support system that assists youth athletes in navigating these challenges and encourages an emphasis on personal growth and developing resilience to the pressures of social media and online perception.
1) O’Reilly, M., Dogra, N., Whiteman, N., Hughes, J., Eruyar, S. and Reilly, P., 2018. Is social media bad for mental health and wellbeing? Exploring the perspectives of adolescents. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 23(4), pp.601-613.
2) Rice, S.M., Purcell, R., De Silva, S., Mawren, D., McGorry, P.D. and Parker, A.G., 2016. The mental health of elite athletes: A narrative systematic review. Sports Medicine, 46, pp.1333-1353.
3) Walton, C.C., Purcell, R., Henderson, J.L., Kim, J., Kerr, G., Frost, J., Gwyther, K., Pilkington, V., Rice, S. and Tamminen, K.A., 2024. Mental health among elite youth athletes: a narrative overview to advance research and practice. Sports Health, 16(2), pp.166-176.
4) Fiedler, R., Heidari, J., Birnkraut, T. and Kellmann, M., 2023. Digital media and mental health in adolescent athletes. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 67, Article 102421.
Luke McInerney is a PhD Research Student supervised by Dr. John Perry and Prof. Peter Clough in the Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences at the University of Limerick, having graduated from the Sport and Exercise Sciences program in 2023. Luke’s research focuses upon the support networks of high-performance athletes and implications for their development and wellbeing.
Contact: mcinerney.luke@ul.ie. Follow on X: @lllukemmm. LinkedIn
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