Teenagers are constantly posting, tweeting and snapping their thoughts, photos and videos to their different social media.

"These are people that may be making mistakes that could be unfortunate and could carry through with them for a while," said Adam Earnheardt, Youngstown State University Social Media Professor.

Now more than ever during a pandemic, colleges look at student's social media pages as a background check.

"Does it have the potential to create some misunderstanding? Does it have some potential to create some miscommunication?" Earnheardt said. 

"I can test your bench press, I can watch your film, I can tell everything about you on the field but I really don't know what's on your mind until you go on social media and you start telling me," said Mark Porter, with scoutingohio.com. 

Recruiters say the top red flags they see on perspective students and athlete's social media include profanity and racial slurs, underage alcohol consumption and drug use and sharing extreme political views.

"Political issues are a trend," Earnheardt said. "A lot of them are 50/50 issues and you could pick the wrong side of those and that may not fit in our locker room."

"You could be denied admission to a college, you could be denied a top scholarship and you may not even know that the top reason you were denied was because of a social media post," Earnheardt said. 

D.C based attorney and former federal prosecutor, Shan Wu, defends students in college misconduct cases.

He gave these 3 tips to 21 News:

  1. Assume nothing you post is private.  Even disappearing messages can be captured before they disappear so nothing on social media is really private.
  2. Take up the telephone again – talk to friends rather than through posts/messaging because speech – unlike Snapchat – really does disappear into thin air!
  3. If something goes wrong don’t try to defend yourself on social media – that’s a recipe for disaster that only worsens things.  The best solution is usually to just go dark.