Social Media and High School Student Athletes: Exploring Differences in Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube Usage by Gender, Sport, and Recruit Ranking

To date, no research has explored how high school athletes leverage social media while they are recruits, investigating which platforms these athletes use and possible gender differences. As a result, this mixed methods content analysis engaged with major recruitment rankings systems across six major sports (fall sports: football, women’s volleyball), (winter sports: men’s and women’s basketball) and spring sports (men’s baseball and women’s softball) to explore how each sport’s top ten recruits use social media. To identify this study’s sample, we engaged with several authoritative recruit rankings systems (ESPN, etc.) to determine the top ten recruits in the Class of 2024 in each sport, ensuring gender equity by including both men’s and women’s recruits. Results suggest Twitter (X) and Instagram were the most popular platforms across all genders and sports, with men athletes using these platforms at a higher rate and enjoying higher levels of engagement than women. Contradicting prior social media research, this study also finds that highly ranked high school athletes did not use YouTube and TikTok nearly as much as broader market research would suggest, possibly highlighting the differences between Generation Z social media consumption and creation. Implications for research, policy, practice, and youth advocacy are addressed.