facebook, twitter, instagram etc

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Originally posted by Coach_May:
I have preached this to my own son's and my players as well. I really don't have a better word for it so I will just say it "Some people are just stupid." One of my wife's friends told the whole world of her upcoming vacation to Mexico. For 2 or 3 weeks she told everyone when they were leaving , coming back and where they were going. They had a great time on the vacation. Then came home to find that someone had cleaned out the house.

I have a hard time understanding why people feel the need to put their life out there for others to see. Young people are trying to impress other people and post stuff that they shouldn't post or even be thinking about in the first place. Forget the coaches or pro ball office folks for a minute. Why would you want anyone to see that kind of stuff? Why would you be thinking or saying that kind of stuff in the first place? Get your act together and you don't have to worry about it.

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Originally posted by lhprhp:
I just don't understand why people blame Facebook or any other new technology when it boils to common sense and using things responsibly. Too many people say or put things online that they wouldn't say or do in public because it's either done anonymously or not to someone's face. And it occasionally happens on these boards as well.

We let our kids get Facebook, etc years ago with the understanding that we also have the password and that we will monitor it. We also told them what expectations we had as far as its use and let them know the consequences if they abused it. Our kids are now 19 and 22 and we're friends on Facebook...their choice, not ours...because they don't have anything to hide. Unfortunately, too many parents just let their kids do whatever (online and wherever) and choose not to know what they're doing.

Like Jack White said in the song Effect And Cause, "if you're heading to the grave, you don't blame the hearse."

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It never fails that I will hear one of them say "I wonder if Dempsey likes this song?"

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Originally posted by Mizzoubaseball:
Two of our kids have facebook and twitter. I am friends and follow both. Never really had problems in this area. Our church pastor's name is Dempsey. We always tell them to act like Dempsey is a friend or follower of you before you post anything. I guess it works.

But it will come back to haunt me at times. I'll be listening to some song from the 80's that could be deemed innapropriate. It never fails that I will hear one of them say "I wonder if Dempsey likes this song?"

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Originally posted by RJM:

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Originally posted by Lefty's Dad:
Son is a college freshman. In addition to a long lecture from the head coach, every freshman athlete at the school was required to attend a "Social Media Seminar" one night. He has since just deleted his facebook account, still has the twitter thing but rarely posts anything. One guy on the team tweeted something about going to his "stupid lab" and that led to the head coach lecture, so they do check on that kind of stuff.

I am curious about the use of twitter as a recruiting tool. I know a lot of coaches and schools seem to be on twitter and they follow a lot of players. My curiosity though is whether or not it can be useful for players and/or parents to post updates about the player on Twitter. For instance a mini-player profile, or update on fastball speeds, running speeds, etc. Posting game play photos, links to news stories, etc. Any thoughts?

Start of the fall, winter and spring sports seasons I have a mandatory meeting with parents and players.  We talk about various things but one thing I warn them about is keyboard courage.  Posting things to social media because it allows you to think you're invincible when you're not.  I tell them we aren't going to go hunting social media but if it's brought to our attention we will do something about it.  That includes suspension from the team, gone from the team and suspended from school.  We have one or two incidents each year and everyone knows about it because that stuff gets out no matter how we try to keep it confidential.  It still happens each year after people realize others have been suspended kicked off or suspended from school.  Everyone thinks they are invincible.

http://twitter.com/SMUCoachMal...s/644111082819158016

A lot of the camps and showcases my 2016 has attended have discussed social media habits.

From my perspective talking to the teenagers that play (and have played) for me, at least in NYC metro area, facebook is pretty much dead to these kids (like MySpace!)...twitter and instagram are pretty easy to manage (they just start an account that doesn't pertain to them, though that's easily found out of you know what your doing). The big SM app platform they use is Snapchat. Because the posts "go away". 

There was an article this week about a Pace football player that was kicked off the team because of a posting on some SM platform of him in attire that was pretty inappropriate. As I've told my two sons, your actions will usually have repercussions, so be careful what you do. In everything you do. I've been lucky so far. 

MCass, in regards to DMs via Twitter i have personal experience with that being utilized for comms with a coach during recruiting. I'm not sure if it is covered under "official contact" or defined but i know i have severals DMs across various periods where no one else was contacting me or my son about recruiting....if you know what i mean. FTR, it is not the coaches or school where he ended up with a scholarship.

We speak to our players about it before every season.  We also monitor our players on social media very heavily year round.  I have sent several players a stern email after seeing something they posted.  They are kids.  They need guidance.

Hmmm…me too.  Based on what I am seeing, I would say many HS players believe twitter is a useful recruiting tool.  To me it's becoming quite a bore.  I'm seeing an increasing stream of humble brags ("bummed that it's raining here at the Area Code games and my brand new superman tee shirt is getting wet"), reminders of how hard a kid is working ("here's a video of me doing plyometrics…what are you doing to get better?"), just plain bragging ("3 for 4 today with 7 stolen bases"), and the I-should-have-been-picked-too ("congrats to my Team USA buds, miss you guys…").  

I think the old "proud to announce I've committed to xxx" or "stoked we made the playoffs" are great, as are videos of bloopers and the occasional truly exception play, but the other stuff…I can live without.

It's something I increasingly worry about with my son. His social media pages are pretty tame and have been checked...for the most part. He's also been "educated" about what this can mean for recruitment. However, there are so many of them. Last week, we sat down and were filling out the questionnaire for a particular college and they specifically asked for user names for several sites. One I hadn't checked so we went onto it. Damn. The problem is with a nickname he was given not long after we moved here. "Bong." Not a good nickname when you live in Colorado. The origins are pretty tame in reality. It was a take off of his last name. At first he was Chandler Bing. That morphed into Chanandler Bing (don't ask me how), which became Chanandler Bong and, finally, simply "Bong." One of the team sayings that still persists is that when they need a win and put him on the mound, they "slip them the Bong." The other joke used to be that they would tell him, "See the Bong, be the Bong." These are unfortunately rampant on his Instagram page. No drug references, but it keeps coming up. I actually had him get rid of the page - his user name was chanandlerbong. However, if you Google his name, it may take a few pages, but it still comes up with a link to his Instagram site and the phrase "See the Bong, be the bong." Don't know what I can do about it.

I have a twitter account. Actually tweet once in awhile. I somehow ended up with quite a few followers.

A while back I tweeted something about Richard Sherman insane act after a Seattle win. I then got a reply calling me a racist. Actually pissed me off because I'm about as far from being a racist as anyone could imagine.  However, I sure learned a quick lesson about thinking carefully before you tweet. I see tweets by HS players that are extremely vulger or stupid. Makes you wonder what they're thinking or if they're thinking at all.

True. I was looking through the Twitter account of a young man last year who was a D1 commit as a freshman. His tweets seemed to all be about God and baseball until you got back far enough and found some racist stuff. It seems that at some point he got the word, but didn't delete everything. However, the school didn't go back far enough or gave a 14yo lefty throwing 90 mph a break.

I know a player who has made his twitter account private somehow. You have to be a verified something or other to be able to follow him.  Not sure how you do that, not being a twitter aficionado.  But maybe that should be standard operating procedure for kids who don't want recruiters snooping around their twitter feeds.

According to my son, the topic came up among a few of the players at a recent showcase. A major D1 recruit who has committed since then told my son that the college had actually asked him for his passwords so they could look at his account.