For many in the sports media industry, Twitter is necessary to stay updated on the latest news. Some choose to use it to interact with their audience. However, reading feedback from others you don’t know can sometimes be a drain on your mental health.
Adam Amin, who became the voice of the Chicago Bulls on NBC Sports Chicago in 2020-21 to go with announcing NFL and MLB games on FOX in recent years, he chose to stop interacting on Twitter nine months ago.
He shared that information with Mike Golic Jr. and Brandon Newman on an episode of the GoJo with Mike Golic Jr. podcast. Amin talked about how he would go on Twitter and search for his name to see what people would say and that had a big effect on how he viewed himself.
“I got tired of leaning on other people for my own self-value and that was a hard thing to come to terms with. Once I figured that out and said let me disconnect from this completely and see if it affects me at all, I think it has. I still get frustrated, I still see tweets and I miss the interactions.”
“I’ve avoided seeing replies that are nice because I don’t want to lean on it too much to make myself feel better. I need to get that from actual people. I need to get that from a different source. It doesn’t mean I’m right and you’re wrong, it doesn’t mean Twitter is a bad place, it doesn’t mean I won’t come back, maybe I will. I couldn’t deal with it at that point in my life when I was dealing with a new job on FOX, 2 big sports, calling MLB playoff games, calling NBA for the third-largest market in the country.”
With that being said, Amin understands that people are entitled to their opinions on things. However, he doesn’t feel that people are meant to absorb the amount of criticism that social media can bring your way when you’re in the public eye.
Amin said he still checks Twitter, but he only goes there to look at information and does not reply back to anyone.
“I can’t stop using it. It’s the greatest information curation tool in the history of the planet,” he said. “I can’t stop using this app because it makes my job a hundred times easier. Maybe if I stop interacting with it completely, maybe I’ll see it for what it is. It’s user-sensitive. You get out of it what you put into it.”
