Twitter and its Place in Professional Sports

Ever since Twitter became a huge social media networks you have seem the controversy between professional athletes and what they "tweet". The NFL was the first league to take action against twitter making a rule that players or coaches were forbid from tweeting during games as well as a certain amount of time before and after the game. Now that I can understand considering that teams want their athletes completely focused when it came to playing in games, but recently some professional sports have gone way overboard with their penalties regarding. Just about a week ago Knicks player J.R. Smith was fined $35,000 for posting what was considered an inappropriate picture of his girlfriend to twitter along with a funny caption to go along with it. While the post might have been stupid and immature of Smith, his twitter belongs to himself and himself only. The NBA needs to stay out of the players personal business regarding twitter as long as it is not violating any rules already made. Major league sports corporations need to keep a positive image of the athletes representing their league, but athletes' social media is for their own personal use and it is up to them to make wise decisions.

The Power of Social Media

With the recent explosion of social media throughout the world, it has become a crucial tool in multiple uprisings of people living in countries with unfair dictatorship. Facebook and twitter have already been accredited as a key part of the overthrowing of corrupt governments in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Now within the last week the whole Kony campaign has spread in unbelievable speed throughout the country mostly due to Facebook, twitter, and Youtube. It is pretty crazy that in a span of just a few years social media networks have gained enough power to do something as important as help overthrow governments. With the impact social media has already made on the earth who knows how much more it expends in just the next couple years. I believe social media will continue to grow in power and influence as well as expanding profits for the social media companies.

Social Media's Effect on the Future

The youth in our country are obviously loving Facebook as well as all the other social media available, but the question is will our actions taken when we are a teenager affect us down the road. There are always news stories about how someone either didn't get into a college or get a job because of content posted on Facebook. This content can range from inappropriate pictures to racist or tasteless status's. A football player who went to high school by me just recently lost multiple Division 1 scholarships for football due to some of the things he tweeted. I don't think anyone can argue that social media is not a fun and entertaining activity to participate in, but these days with every action made seeming to be public information if needed teenagers have to rethink about what they post before they do. I am not saying that I am above anyone who has a completely flawless Facebook. Although as I get older I realize how harmful social media can be to your future. I don' believe anyone can say that social media is a good or bad thing yet, we will have to wait a couple years to see if it is doing more harm than good.

Social Media and School work Don't Mix

If you were to ask every freshman at WNEU with a Facebook, twitter, or other type of social network if they check it while doing their homework I would guess that almost every kid would say yes. Social media affecting student's school work could definitely be looked at as a problem for our generation. You hear stories about adults being fired from their jobs due to checking their social media pages instead of doing their work. The same problem lies within students, for instance I constantly hear students talking about how they procrastinate with their work because they are too distracted with facebook, twitter, etc. I wonder if someone had an experiment with a group of students who were allowed to be on soicla media as long as they'd like and another group who could only be on for 30 minutes. If you let this experiment run for a couple weeks it would be very interesting to see what the results are. I'm not saying that social media is a bad thing because like 99% of teenagers I do own a facebook I just raise the question whether it is hurting our effectiveness in the classroom or not.

The Effects Social Media has on Sports

Over the past decade Social Media has really evolved into the main source of information regarding news in sports. These days new stories in sports are reported within minutes of the events occurring due to how many people are constantly covering each sports team and player. For sports fans social media is great because they never go a minute without knowing what is going on with the sports world. Personally, I love that I am always being updated on what is going on with all my favorite teams. Even though sports fans love the effects social media has on the sports world, some athletes and coaches see the constant media as a negative. With the media always following players, there is little to no privacy time for them throughout the day and many athletes careers have been severely damaged due to the media such as Tiger Woods. So the question lies, what is more important to the sports social media companies, the satisfaction of the fans or the privacy of the athletes?