Holistic Athlete Weekly Newsletter

How to Approach World Events

You may have noticed a few things going on in the world today. Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, Iran, Syria, Yemen — not to mention significant tensions here in the United States. While there seems to be a particularly high amount of conflict, there’s also an unprecedented amount of access and exposure due to social media, with almost 5 billion people engaging in at least one platform. The algorithms feed users information based on how they’ve interacted with previous posts, leading to echo-chambers where individuals mostly see and hear what they already believe in (or want to believe in). This creates some distorted senses of reality based on confirmation bias. Our athletes are also highly likely to hold a world-view and belief system similar to their parents based on how they were raised and what they hear at home.

Social media presents other challenges besides division and misinformation. It used to be that if something happened around the world, you’d read about it in the newspaper days later. With mainstream media and major news outlets, “breaking news” became a more immediate way to deliver information to viewers in a more immediate timeframe, as anchors and reporters would discuss important stories. Today, kids on social media can literally watch events happen in real time, as people all over the world broadcast current events on live streams via TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, etc. Now, you don’t just read about war in the paper or see it reported on TV, you can watch bombings, riots, etc. on social media as it happens.