Social media access has reached a level of society-wide absorption so complete, it barley seems newsworthy anymore.

Every generation participates in social media in some form. While the platform might change by the demographic, the part it plays in almost everyone’s lives is the most revolutionary development of the 21st Century.

Yet, there’s much we don’t know about social media and its ramifications. That is especially true when it comes to college athletes.

Social media gives athletes the freedom to express themselves without their thoughts being filtered through the traditional media or via approval from their coaches and administrators. In savvy hands, it provides a level of self-expression that can make athletes stars based on their social media presence as much as they are for their athletic accomplishments.

But there is a dark side to it, too.

Social media brings a level of scrutiny that is personal on a level technology could not provide until the medium was created. A bad game or bad team performance once meant facing boos or criticism in the arena itself. Not anymore.

Now, athletes take the criticism home with them — on the very forum where some of them seek validation, from the very same people from whom they seek and get validation.

Add in the seismic recent changes within college athletics, including liberalized transfer rules and name, image and likeness (NIL).

The result is an unprecedented mix of factors that haven’t yet been adequately studied, partly because it’s such a recent phenomenon and partly because the factors that go into it are constantly changing.

There has been a gradual increase in scrutiny on the mental-health impact social media has on athletes. It goes hand-in-hand with an increased awareness among the current college-aged athletes on their mental health generally. Both coaches and experts in the field have indicated more athletes are seeking counseling specifically due to social-media related issues.

Indiana University professor and sports psychologist Jesse Steinfeldt is one expert who has devoted professional and academic attention to the social media landscape for athletes. Steinfeldt and Indiana doctoral candidate Jeffrey S. Ruser wrote a chapter called “It’s a Contact Sport: The Psychological Impact of Social Media In Sport” for the Routledge Handbook of Clinical Sports Psychology. Steinfeldt, a former football player at Yale, spoke to CNHI Sports Indiana on the evolving world of social media.

“Social media is a really new access point to athletes that has benefits, but it has a lot of unintended consequences and a lot of negative pieces to it,” Steinfeldt said. “And one of the interesting clinical pieces is there have been studies that have shown that increased social media use increases the likelihood of depression and anxiety.”

A May 2022 NCAA survey indicated 47% of female athletes and 25% of male athletes “felt overwhelmed by all they had to do.” In the category of “felt overwhelming anxiety” 29% of female and 12% of male athletes responded that’s how they felt. Meanwhile, 9% of female and 6% of male athletes indicated they “felt so depressed it was difficult to function.”

These numbers don’t correlate to social media specifically (respondents were not broken down statistically in that manner). But, anecdotally, the evidence is mounting it’s becoming a problem for student-athletes.

“They can’t get away from it. So, yeah, you do have counseling set up for a lot of players. We deal with it with our team as well. I won’t have that fight,” Indiana men’s basketball coach Mike Woodson said.

One might ask why don’t athletes (or anyone else) who struggle with social media just quit? Leave it behind. Cut out the stress.

It’s not as easy, or obvious, as it might seem, especially to the age groups who didn’t grow up with it.

“Realistically, asking folks in this day and age to completely disconnect? That’s not going to happen. That’s just part of the way our culture has gone, not just in athletics but in society overall. It’s more about educating folks on how to use it in a more healthy manner,” said Purdue director of counseling and sports psychologist Brad Foltz, a pupil of Steinfeldt when Foltz was a student at Indiana.

South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley acknowledged the futility of trying to enforce a social-media ban, which was the initial reaction among many programs and coaching staffs when social media penetrated the athletic landscape in the late 2000s and 2010s.

“A few years ago I was more like, ‘Hey, let’s sacrifice social media for the season.’ Then as you continue on in this space, I do think it has a psychological disadvantage to ask the players to sacrifice that. It’s a part of who they are,” Staley said during the NCAA women’s basketball tournament in March.

Staley and every other coach in almost every athletic endeavor also has to deal with the generational divide that comes with social media.

Traditionally, coaches have been the conduit to help a player get through most of what can trouble a student-athlete as they progress with their careers. Very often, coaches take the “I once walked in your shoes” approach to mentoring their players.

That dynamic doesn’t exist when it comes to social media, given today’s coaches didn’t grow up with social media and don’t always understand how central it is to the lives of today’s college-aged students.

“It’s created another learning curve for coaches,” said Kelsey Dawson, Purdue’s assistant director of counseling and sports psychologist. “Coaches, by and large, did not grow up with this, but even trying to empathize and understand the magnitude of the implications that it’s having? I think on a rational standpoint, they understand it, but from an emotional side, their mind is like, ‘Why are you so attached? Why does this mean so much?’ I think that can be a challenge to grasp.”

That generational divide is a factor for student-athletes, but sports psychologists caution against turning it into a blame game.

“As a society, we weren’t prepared for (social media). We opened the floodgates to social media, but the people in charge didn’t really provide education or resources to help young people learn how to use it. It’s not on parents or teachers to know that stuff. It just kind of appeared,” Foltz said.

It’s a topic that vexes coaches and athletes alike as they try to get a read on what the lay of the land will eventually be. As both go through the process, there will inevitably be some athletes who are overwhelmed by it all.

“I wish it was that easy just to tell them to leave it alone, but it’s not. It’s in their DNA. This is what they do. It’s tough, man, because it’s hurting a lot of athletes I think,” Woodson said.

Foltz is hopeful the circle can be squared. Psychological study and historic experience suggests humans are the most adaptable beings in the world, but it doesn’t happen overnight.

Athletics is at the dawn of social media and what role and what impact it will have on in our lives as much as any other walk of life is.

“People adapt to the environment and the situation they’re in,” Foltz said. “Humans adapt in pretty extreme circumstances. Folks underestimate the resilience of young people and their ability to cope and adapt.”

With one proviso added.

“It doesn’t mean it’s not a hard navigation to follow,” Foltz said.