A recent study has shown that social media is used on a daily basis by most athletes – and is impacting sleep, performance, mental health and well-being. We break down the key results and provide some advice for using social media in a healthier way.
Social media is part of daily life for almost every athlete. But what impact is it having on your mental health?
This was the subject of a new study, conducted by researchers in the IOC-supported ReFORM Research Network, which surveyed 912 athletes from age 12 to 24 in multiple countries.
The study found:
- 93.4% of athletes reported daily use of at least one social media platform
- 63.6% of athletes reported that social media was interfering with training or recovery
- 57.1% of athletes reported that they receive encouragement or sport-related support online
- 47.7% of athletes reported negative effects on sleep quality
- 29.2% of athletes reported pressure to maintain an online image
- 25.4% of athletes reported stress or anxiety related to social media use
- 10.4% of athletes reported online abuse
We spoke to study lead Dr. Camille Tooth, Head of Research at the Luxembourg Institute of Research in Orthopaedics, Sports Medicine and Science (LIROMS), and colleague Dr. Katy Moreels-Seil, child psychiatrist and Scientific Consultant at LIROMS, to find out more about the study and its key takeaways for athletes.
Build routines to protect performance
Two of the most striking outcomes of the study were that social media is interfering with training or recovery and impacting sleep quality. The more time athletes spent online, the worse these effects became.
Poor sleep can have consequences for mental health, including – but not limited to – stress, anxiety or depression. It can also affect recovery, injury risk and athletic performance. Social media can therefore have an indirect impact on performance.
To help address this, you can establish practical routines such as establishing specific times for social media use, setting a time to stop using your phone at night, leaving your device away from your bed and disabling unnecessary notifications – but you must be willing to make a change.
We know that you can’t avoid your phone or social media completely, so you need to develop your own self-regulation skills. And the earlier these habits are introduced in your career, the easier they will be to manage later on.
Choose active use over passive scrolling
The study also identified an important threshold: negative effects became notably stronger once athletes passed around four hours of social media use a day.
Time alone doesn’t tell the whole story, however. There is a difference between active use – consciously choosing what to engage with, actively seeking specific information and communicating with others – and passive use, when you scroll through the content served to you by the algorithm.
This effect can also differ from platform to platform, with TikTok, for example, being more strongly driven by its algorithm than Instagram. This means you have less control over the videos you receive.
That can be particularly important when you are exposed to potentially harmful or triggering content, such as posts about body image, as the app may continue serving similar content, which can negatively affect your mental health and wellbeing.
Understanding how you’re using social media, how each platform actually works, and making deliberate choices about who you follow can help you stay in control.
You can also use options like ‘Not interested’ or ‘Hide’ to train your algorithm away from content that doesn’t sit right with you.
Think before you post
The final takeaway from the study for any athlete on social media is simple: prepare.
Creating your public profile should not be improvised. You should think in advance about what you want to share, what you want to keep private, how you will deal with criticism and when you will disconnect.
It’s also important to recognise the consequences of having a public profile. As your visibility grows, so does the possibility of receiving hateful messages or comments.
If you’re interested in finding out more about the study, you can read it in full here.
To learn more about how social media can affect your mental health and strategies to manage this, check out our Mindful Social Media course on Athlete365 Learning.
Click here to access the course
*This story was originally published on Olympics.com*
