Watch what you say because people are listening

In this class we talked about the power of social media in politics and the power of social media in general. We talked about what you say on Twitter and Facebook can be used against you in job interviews and in the professional world. This post is going to be along those lines.

I’m a big fan of college sports, especially college football. I find every aspect of the sport intriguing including recruiting. This blog post is going to be a story of how a top ranked recruit lost his scholarship because of his Twitter feed.

Yuri Right was a top rated recruit from New Jersey. He was being recruited by Michigan and had a scholarship about all locked up to play football there.

That is until they read his Twitter feed.

I won’t actually repeat what he said because although this is just a class project it is still on the Internet and will be linked to my name and I like to think I understand my digital footprint enough to not have that linked to my name. I have seen the Tweets though and most of them contain very strong profanity, racial slurs, degrading words towards women and overall, things that you wouldn’t want associated with a job/company or in this case a university.

Wright lost his potential scholarship to Michigan and instead got one at the University of Colorado because college football is corrupt and the only thing that matters is winning (but that’s a post for another time and another blog). He was also expelled from his high school over this incident. The issue here is that this young man was not really educated on how what he says on Twitter is available to everyone.

He, at the time, had almost 1,600 followers and chose to make his tweets public for all to see. That’s his first mistake. His second mistake was writing tweets that were much better saved for the locker room or his buddy’s basement. It seems that younger kids don’t fully understand the power of what they put on the Internet.

Here is an article posted by Sports Illustrated that details certain high school athletes and how they are using Twitter and how it could come back to haunt them. It also talks about something one college is doing that is very interesting.

The University of Arizona has a social media like training for its new recruits coming into campus life. The course teaches them basically what to say on Twitter and what not to say. It details the impacts of what these kids say because as high profile recruits at a Division 1 football school they will have lots of people following them from all types of ages and professions.

The bottom line to follow is if you wouldn’t say it in front of your mom don’t put it on Twitter.

This is a step that I believe high schools should take with all students, and not just student athletes. As kids are getting on the Internet earlier and earlier it becomes adults responsibility to instruct them on the importance of keeping their digital footprint in line and in this particular case, keep their dirty mouths off social media.

I believe the best course of action would be to teach kids the proper and safe use of social media at an early age, possibly as early as middle school so kids can understand the impact and the consequences of posting things on the Internet. That way kids won’t put themselves in danger of harming their future job offers or lose a full ride scholarship to a major college football program.