Social media is no game for elite athletes
Approximately 50 per cent of top athletes are struggling with fatigue, burnout and anxiety. Even more with body image. Social media is ‘‘100 per cent’’ a contributing factor, writes Zoe¨ George.
Eighty per cent of elite female athletes report social media is the number one source of pressure for them to conform to traditional ideas around feminine body image.
Seventy-three per cent say having that pressure to have a specific ‘‘physical appearance’’ is damaging to their overall health, including engaging in disordered eating practices and interruptions to their menstrual cycle.
Fifty nine per cent say social media is a source of performance-related pressure, more so than they reportedly experienced from their coaches.
That’s according to recent research from WHISPA – a women’s health in sport group, which reports to High Performance Sport New Zealand.
Professor Holly Thorpe from the University of Waikato says many female athletes involved with the research reported receiving abusive comments and ‘‘trolling’’ on social media.
‘‘You’ve got racism and sexism going on ... and a lot of really negative body comments as well,’’ she said.
‘‘A lot of athletes aren’t calling it out, they’re just trying to deal with it . . . [but] it takes a significant toll.’’
Those statistics are worse than what is being reported overseas. In 2020 the BBC found 30 per cent of UK elite female athletes were targeted with online abuse. That had doubled in five years. Athletes reported being told ‘‘I hope you die of cancer’’, and having their bodies commented on in derogatory and demeaning ways; 78 per cent reported they are conscious of their body image.
Athletes will often stay quiet about negative or abusive comments because there’s ‘‘too much emotional labour’’ involved, Thorpe says, especially when female athletes are trying to juggle sport, family life and other commitments.
But some are starting to call it out. Sevens player Niall Williams is one of them. In 2020, she highlighted a message she received on Instagram that body-shamed her and told her women’s rugby was ‘‘disgusting’’.
Thorpe called Williams’ actions ‘‘brilliant’’ and ‘‘brave’’.
‘‘She turned the tables and made that person accountable,’’ Thorpe says.
‘‘Then all of her followers and fans around the world jumped on board and . . . offered a lot of support.’’
Black Fern Chelsea Alley received the same support from fellow athletes and fans following a recent Instagram post in which she explained that because of the lack of resources and money given to women’s rugby, she and others were doing it tough.
She received nearly 6000 likes and comments on her post – some from other elite women athletes, not just from New Zealand but around the world.
With the good and supportive though, comes the not-so-supportive.
Amongst the feedback was a message from New Zealand Sevens player Joe Webber who suggested that female players should find something else to do if they wanted to earn more money.
‘‘Pro/Semi Pro Rugby is a business. If you don’t sell much product you don’t get paid much.’’
It was ‘‘tough’’ reading some comments. They aren’t helpful and can be damaging, Alley says, but it’s nothing new.
‘‘The sad thing is we’ve just become used to hearing that type of thing . . . often it’s from males in rugby ... There’s this kind of entitlement from [them] that they think that because they get bigger crowds ... they deserve the money, and we don’t.’’
The pay disparity between men’s and women’s sport – in some cases as high as 88 per cent – is having a direct impact on the way female athletes engage with social media, Thorpe says.
Women are doing unpaid ‘‘digital labour’’ to boost their brand and ‘‘digital capital’’. There are risks with being on social media, Thorpe says, but it can be a lucrative space for some.
‘‘There are a lot of opportunities that come to female athletes when they have a big social media following,’’ she says.
Many athletes – like Serena Williams, who has 13 million Instagram followers – are posting about ‘‘beauty, femininity, lifestyle’’ rather than sporting achievements, and are often engaging in ‘‘self sexualising’’ practices as a way to attract audiences and in turn, sponsors and advertisers, Thorpe says.
Mainstream media has moved away from sexualising female athletes, with the latest media research from Sport New Zealand showing fewer than one per cent of stories about women in sport feature sexualisation.
‘‘Female athletes with the biggest international followings on social media, yes they are strong, successful and powerful athletes . . . but they are also doing femininity, very overt femininity,’’ she says.
‘‘It was often those athletes that combine that strength and power and success with a particular
‘‘You’ve got racism and sexism going on . . . and a lot of really negative body comments as well. A lot of athletes aren’t calling it out, they’re just trying to deal with it . . . [but] it takes a significant toll.’’ Professor Holly Thorpe, above
type of heteronormative sexuality, that femininity, that get the biggest followings.
‘‘It’s a tough one because those athletes are ... playing into those old media tropes, but they’re doing it to themselves now. And they’re doing it themselves, so they can get paid to support their careers, because they don’t get paid the same as male athletes.
‘‘These women are not apologising for it, but they are getting punished for it.’’
Thorpe says women are targets of abuse because ‘‘parts of society’’ find it ‘‘quite challenging’’ seeing women in spaces that have usually been occupied by men – including sport.
‘‘There are groups ... who feel like powerful women threaten their place in the world,’’ she says.
‘‘They use social media to police and regulate women in sport. It’s trying to put them back in their place, their gendered place.’’
Leading sports psychologist Rod Corban says 50 per cent of athletes he works with are struggling with ‘‘severe anxiety’’, and social media ‘‘100 per cent’’ contributes to that.
Athletes continued to post on social media during the Covid-19 lockdown. Some were posting
about their ‘‘fancy’’ training, which led to anxiety for not only those posting, but those who were ‘‘sitting at home’’ not training, Corban says.
It comes from pressure for athletes to post about them ‘‘living their best lives’’. But that mantra, and unrealistic expectation, can be harmful, to both their physical and mental health.
‘‘They feel like they are frauds first of all for [posting],’’ he says.
‘‘Then… we are hardwired to worry about what other people think about us, or to look at other people and think ‘they’re so much better off’. Social media has made that worse.’’
Social media makes it harder to be self-compassionate or establish a feeling of being good enough, he says.
‘‘Because of all these posts about people’s fantastic life, or them achieving all this stuff, somehow it makes us feel less worthy.
‘‘And this is the thing; that life should be fantastic, and you should be happy all the time, and you should be enjoying it. That’s just not real.’’
Athletes are already under immense pressure, particularly around the expectations they place on themselves. But they are human like everyone else, Corban says.
However, that doesn’t stop the ‘‘harden up’’ mentality from continuing to be prevalent on social media, and that is contributing to the anxiety too, he says.
This attitude is part of the New Zealand psyche and something to be wary of.
‘‘ ‘Taking a concrete pill’ is putting your hand up and saying ‘I just can’t cope here, I need some help’. When we get in a space that is not healthy for us, we do the worst thing as a human, we disconnect from people. The best thing to do is connect, get support, get help.’’
That’s what Chelsea Alley did. Her post was the ‘‘most vulnerable’’ she had ever made herself, she says. She was feeling ‘‘up and down’’, coming off playing in the first Women’s Super Rugby game. A few of the comments affected her more than usual.
She’s had to learn to block out those, including some fans, who scrutinise everything.
‘‘I just think to myself ‘what are you guys doing?’ They are probably just sitting at home on the couch, typing on the keyboard,’’ she says.
She asks for those who are considering writing something abusive to think twice.
‘‘People just need to check themselves and realise that if someone’s opening up like that, on social media, if someone’s feeling that way, they’re not saying that for attention, something’s actually going wrong. Is it worth putting your two cents in when someone is already feeling very vulnerable?.
‘‘If you’re a fan, we appreciate all the support. We read all the comments so keep them coming.
‘‘For those of you telling us to ‘harden up’, go do some research on what women’s rugby players have been doing for the last 80 years.’’
It shouldn’t be just athletes who are telling the abusers to stop. Social media platforms and sports bodies have a responsibility too, Thorpe says.
That’s happening in the UK, where this month several highprofile sporting codes – including Premier League football clubs, rugby, netball cricket, Formula 1, and rugby league – along with major sponsors and sport media, boycotted social media in a show of solidarity against online racist and homophobic abuse.
Manchester United released research showing a 350 per cent increase in abusive messages directed towards the club’s players between 2019 and 2021. More than 3300 abusive posts were analysed and found 86 per cent were racist – the vast majority containing the ‘‘N’’ word – and eight per cent were homophobic or transphobic.
At the time, Twitter said it had removed more than 7000 abusive messages targeting footballers between 2019 and 2021.
‘‘What we could do in New Zealand better would be supporting our athletes – both male and female – to navigate that social media environment . . . in a way that is healthy and beneficial for them, that doesn’t impact their mental health and wellbeing,’’ Thorpe says.
‘‘No wonder our athletes are getting tired and burnt out. They are doing a double-shift. They are doing the physical labour [in sport] then doing the digital labour, and that’s very much part of being an athlete today.
‘‘No wonder it’s taking its toll.’’