Chris Perkins: Here's how the Dolphins are dealing with social media negativity

Chris Perkins, South Florida Sun Sentinel on Dec 7, 2024

Published in Football

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MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Social media can be an ugly place for Dolphins players nowadays.

The Dolphins (5-7) are having a disappointing season, and fans are voicing their opinions. Sometimes that negativity stays with players throughout the week.

“That’s happened to me before,” said safety Jordan Poyer, a 12-year veteran who spent the previous seven seasons in Buffalo. “It happened to me in Buffalo multiple times.”

That’s unhealthy.

I’m always curious about how players deal with social media negativity, and their attitudes, as professional athletes, about social media.

I wrote about this topic two years ago. Nothing has changed.

I wish there was a social media strategy between abstinence and being mentally strong. I didn’t find such a solution in the Dolphins’ locker room.

But I found many methods of dealing with social media negativity.

Wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. has 4.2 million followers on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter).

He’s gone at people previously.

“It’s just like, at the end of the day we are human, we are men,” he said. “Like I’m not just going to allow anybody to talk to me any kind of way. I don’t give a f---, regardless.”

Defensive lineman D’Shawn Hand still subscribes to the policy of his college coach at Alabama, Nick Saban. Hand goes on social media but, he said, for the most part he tries to ignore comments about himself or the Dolphins, positive or negative.

“I went to ’Bama, so you know how it is — rat poison,” Hand said with a laugh, parroting a well-known term of Saban’s about media and social media.

Safety Jevon Holland has drawn a distinct line. He only allows comments on X from a select group of people.

“Only the people that I follow, and that have some sort of meaning in my life can comment on what I post,” he said. “So, just like my everyday life, as I walk around and communicate with people, if you’re a stranger, you’re a stranger, I don’t talk to you. But if you’re somebody I know, I’ll go up to you, talk to you.

“I figured I’d change social media and make it as such because I just don’t really give a f--- about what anybody else has got to say except for the people that I care about and the people that have got say in my life.”

What I’ve found is that most players care deeply about what’s said about them on social media, they’re very aware of what’s said about them, and it affects them greatly.

I’d like to see players, as a whole, deal with it better.

So would Poyer.

“I think it needs to be addressed more in our younger athletes,” he said. “And we need to have some more conversations around the ability to play your season and not let social media, not let the media, not let the outside world be able to affect you as a person.”

You walk into the Dolphins locker room after any game, win or lose, and the scene is the same.

Players are sitting at their lockers, heads down, face buried in their phones, scrolling through to see what was said about them on social media.

“I’ve definitely in my career at some point, everyone has, fell victim to reading the comments,” safety Elijah Campbell said.

The reality is each player has to develop his own way of balancing the good with the bad because both will exist on social media.

Coach Mike McDaniel understands that reality.

“This is a big boy business,” he said. “The people that don’t know your situation will have a lot of comments on what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, but you can’t on one side of your mouth get mad about that and then accept the cheering and the praise.

“It’s one of those things that right, wrong, or indifferent, in this generation, it’s noisy either way.”

Beckham says he deals with the negativity by not giving it value.

“Honestly, you just have to get in a place in your life where you don’t care,” he said. “Like, I do not care at all what anybody says, good or bad, because you live for that praise or die by that poison.”

Respectfully, I take exception to that because I’ve seen Beckham go after people on X. Obviously he cares.

Most players care what’s said. Players pay attention to what’s said.

And if they’re on social media, they’re going to find out what’s said whether or not they want to know.

“No matter if you follow somebody or if you don’t follow somebody,” Poyer said, “something is said, you’re going to see it.”

And how players deal with that negativity greatly affects their lives.

I just hope each individual is able to find a strategy that’s right for them. I’m not sure that’s happening right now.

It’s up to the individual to find their own way.

Social media remains the wild, wild west, and players remain gunslingers.

“People are going to comment on what they want to comment on,” Holland said. “I’m not really trippin’, but they’re just not going to be able to comment on my s---.

“They can quote it or whatever, but I’m not going to see it. My notification has already been (set to) that, so I only see what people I follow say, and that’s that.”