Privacy, Please! Athletes Using Social Media at the Wrong Times

Some athletes love to utilize social media as much as possible. Yet sometimes, they pull out their phones at the wrong time. As a result, their thousands of followers are welcomed in and end up seeing something they shouldn’t have seen.

This image is from Chicago Bears running back Tarik Cohen’s Instagram live stream. He decided to video chat live to his fans in the locker room after a win back in 2019. What he didn’t realize, however, was that his teammate Kyle Long was standing behind him naked for all the world to see. Clearly, this was an accident. Cohen was apologetic and Long wasn’t concerned. Nevertheless, this incident pointed towards a bigger issue that athletes must focus on when it comes to their social media use.

Players must be more mindful of when it’s the right or wrong time to put themselves on social media. Going live in the locker room is a major invasion of the privacy of the team and its players. According to a 2019 Bleacher Report article, “Official NFL rules prohibit players, coaches and football operations personnel from using all forms of social media starting 90 minutes before kickoff until all traditional postgame interviews have been completed”. Hopefully, this rule has become more tightly enforced as a result of the incident, and players, including Cohen, can take this as a lesson and will be more mindful of when they pull their phones out.