Coaches: Never befriend your athletes on social media

A social media law expert has warned grassroots sports coaches to stop befriending their athletes on social media platforms as it tended to blur the lines of a professional relationship.

Lawyer Emma Sadleir, the founder of The Digital Law Firm, who was a speaker at the Powerade Performance Academy workshop for grassroots sports coaches at Coca-Cola’s head office, said social media relationships between coaches and their athletes were like oil and water, which should never mix.

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Sadleir said people, especially the young and innocent who coaches were training for a professional sports life, tended to post some disgusting things on social media by virtue of their naivety and such things may compromise the coach-athlete relationship.

“Your athlete may post compromising pictures of him or herself on their timeline and as a friend on social media you will obviously get those pictures too,” she said.

“They may even go to the extent of tagging you on certain postings and that may make you become compromised and sometimes even complicit to illicit postings that will eventually ruin your career.”

Sadleir warned that young athletes should be made aware of the perils of social media.

“Our children will brag about the number of pictures they have on Instagram, the likes on Facebook and the followers on Twitter, not knowing that they have already lost their right to privacy,” Sadleir said.

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She warned that some of the things that children and young athletes posted on social media may eventually come back to haunt them in their professional life or adulthood, hence the need to vigorously protect them. “You may even be fired from work years later for a posting you made during your tender age.”

Although Sadleir warned that ‘digital content was dangerous content’, she cautioned that there was no such thing as bad social media platforms but only bad users. “People must know that if it cannot be put up on a billboard, it cannot equally go on video.”