Danny Gassaway is a senior from Charlotte. He can be reached at dgassawa@email.unc.edu.

Athletes have always faced more scrutiny than the average person. However, the rise of the Internet, and specifically social media, have put athletes in the spotlight more than they ever could have imagined.

With Twitter, we no longer wait for news to appear in the daily newspaper or air on TV. It breaks constantly, in front of our eyes, on our personal timelines. Within moments of Anthony Davis’ block of John Henson to seal the Carolina-Kentucky game in December, the world knew not only that Kentucky had won the game, but exactly how it happened. As a matter of fact, many fans know the result of sports matches before they see what happened on television.

In today’s age of lightning-fast 3G and
Internet, many “live tweets” hit the web before the events on television actually unfold before them (Thank you, Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake for creating these delays in live television). So, this is the world we live in nowadays.

This means athletes can now have a new, completely different relationship with their fans. We know Kendall Marshall has quite the shoe collection. We know even Blue Steel can’t get biscuits after a 100-point Tar Heel effort without ticket stubs. We know which Tar Heel hoopster is the best (or most obsessed) Temple Run gamer. These are interesting tidbits about people we follow with an often unhealthy passion.

Twitter tells us the hobbies of our favorite people that otherwise might never come out in an interview or a feature story. Would we have known that members of the basketball team would be playing pick-up games on some of the outdoor courts around campus last April had it not been for social media? Probably not. Would we have known that some members of our beloved football team were at a swanky super-club in Miami if it weren’t for Twitter? Who knows? The reality is, nothing that Twitter-savvy college athletes choose to do with social media will ever go unnoticed, or uncaught.

The Internet is permanent, which is why even a quickly-deleted post can be sent halfway around the world and to every major news outlet in seconds. It is because of this that the need for compliance officers, both in university athletic departments and inside the confines of the NCAA’s headquarters, and compliance in general, has expanded in recent years. Perhaps the greatest and the most troubling part of social media and its role in college athletics is that we often know way too much about student-athletes.

Social media puts an added pressure on college athletes and intensifies the public scrutiny players must now face. To college athletes, social media has become a double- edged sword. Not only is it an unfiltered outlet for athletes to post about whatever they want, it has also become an open forum for unrestrained abuse of athletes. In January, a Scottish man was charged with racially abusing African-American soccer player Maurice Edu, via Twitter, showcasing the ever-present dark side of social media, the side that often goes unreported. Athletes who choose to engage in social media know that this is part of it, but should they have to deal with issues like these?

Young men and women who have worked hard their entire lives to earn athletic scholarships must not only face the wrath of the message boards and media (which many athletes claim indifference towards), but they must face it unfiltered on social media sites, something that for many of these young athletes represents an escape. It is ideally the place where college students can share their thoughts freely. Tyler Zeller and Harrison Barnes, however, do not have Twitter accounts. As much fun as their teammates seem to be having online, it’s tough to imagine being in their positions and still wanting to engage in social media.

This is the place where missing a shot can lead to such negativity that athletes have had to take extended leaves from their social media accounts. This is the world we live in, where threats no longer occur just by phone or mail, but can occur directly to an athlete through a quick tweet or message. It’s nearly impossible for an athlete to hide in the shadows and away from the limelight when the simple decision to engage in something that every other college student seems to be doing can lead to such hate and negativity.

Welcome to social media.