Harper Murray's Advice on Social Media

In this age, social media has intertwined itself within modern culture. It has innovated the athletic realm and recruiting landscape in innumerable ways– providing outlets for young athletes to reach large audiences and coaching staff, promoting their talent and setting up opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have. However, it also has its downsides, and no one knows that better than Nebraska volleyball star, Harper Murray – who has had a uniquely terrible experience with the internet's worst. Harper has been very open about her mental health journey and how social media has impacted , especially since her bold statement in the 2023 National Championship press conference; exposing her to “a new world of hate I never thought I would get.” Naturally, she became full of self-doubt – as anyone would who would see such things being said about themself – and the comments she received only reinforced that internal monologue. Quickly, she found herself spiraling, deep into a cycle of destructive self-sabotage. 

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It has been a year since that fateful offseason; where Murray hid her internal struggles behind smiling Instagram posts with the team in Hawaii, unbeknownst to her followers how much she was truly suffering. For those in the spotlight, social media is typically used to flaunt their “perfect” lives – the bikini pictures, hangouts with friends at their rich homes – but often, it is nothing more than a facade, a rose-colored lens tinted over the greyness of reality. Harper recognizes this, and implores young people to not compare themselves to what they see on Instagram feeds. “Social media sucks,” Murray says in an interview for Hurrdat: Wired Axcess, “and I think the biggest thing people can do is not compare themselves because its never as good as it looks. I’m a testament to that, and I think the worst thing about social media is that people might compare themselves to what my life might look like.”

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