Sound, simple advice: Don’t tweet stupid

If advice becomes repetitive, chances are there’s a valid reason for sounding like a broken record. The topic of social-media management — or lack thereof — has been broached regularly in this space over the years.

But there are some words of wisdom that cannot be stated enough for high school athletes.

After repeated examples in recent weeks of why a sensible social-media approach is a must at any age, it needs to be repeated — unfortunately.

It’s sound, simple — albeit blunt to make a point: Don’t tweet stupid. In July, three Major League Baseball players — Brewers reliever Josh Hader, Braves starter Sean Newcomb and Nationals shortstop Trea Turner — apologized for past actions on Twitter. The theme was similar. When they were teenagers, they tweeted something ignorant — and it stayed there. When they were professional athletes, someone discovered those tweets and gave that dialogue a renewed and more glaring spotlight.

Then they had to explain how it reflected an immature version of themselves left in the past that clearly isn’t indicative of who they are or their philosophies today.

In all likelihood, when these adults express remorse for expressing sentiments or repeating words that are out of line, their regret is genuine.

They know they shouldn’t have done it.

Yet they did — and the lesson wasn’t fully absorbed until they were caught up in it at a peak moment in their lives.

It doesn’t matter if you become a pro athlete or if you’re trying to impress a college or if you’re walking into a job interview during your athletic career or after it is over.

It doesn’t matter what you’re doing later in life.

Don’t put yourself in that position. Don’t tweet stupid. That terse saying works with or without a comma, by the way.

Tweeting something that can be interpreted as racist, homophobic or in any other way incendiary is plain stupid.

And if such a choice is made, you are stupid in that specific sense and need to be smartened up.

We have seen it play out far too often.

A high school athlete tweets something way out of bounds about an opposing athlete or coach or an official whom they feel did them wrong.

They let the soundtrack in their mind — be it a new song’s lyrics or random thoughts about random subjects because, well, that’s what teenagers do — become amplified on Twitter or other social-media platforms.

But here is what they — and frankly us in our own moments of weakness on those platforms — fail to realize: When you put something on social media, it may as well be for the public record. And someone, somewhere, is watching.

Coaches have been

forced to become hyperaware with their athletes’ online habits and enforce rules on what to say and what not to say — even though it should be fairly obvious.

Schools and communities have faced ridicule when ignorant behavior has been, say, tweeted and screen captured after an attempt at deletion or captured on video and gone viral because it was such an egregious act.

Colleges have rescinded scholarship offers because their coaching staffs see something they don’t like on Twitter from a potential recruit and concluded enough was enough.

This is not to say every teenager doesn’t have a proverbial self-mute button, because there is a lot of common sense and maturity out there.

But it would also be naive to say every teenager knows where the line is.

If the lesson has to be learned at all, let that wisdom be offered in your own community outside of the spotlight. Wouldn’t it be preferable for your circle of friends or an elder role model to show you idiocy instead of hundreds or thousands of people on social media?

So the next time you want to call out your rival school and go over the line with it. The next time you think you were robbed by poor officiating and need to let it out.

The next time you want to be critical of anyone or anything and can’t express it in a reasonable manner. Just don’t. Imagine your horror if something you tweeted at 17 or 18 and completely forget about becomes a problem in your 20s.

Imagine what you would think if the college coach recruiting you or the human resources director staring across a desk at you in a job interview says, “So, we discovered this tweet of yours ...” Words matter. The solution is simple: Don’t tweet stupid.