Jess Carter, an integral player for the England women’s football team, has emerged as the most targeted athlete on social media during the Euro 2025 tournament. The data reveals that 91% of posts discussing Carter expressed negative sentiment, highlighting an alarming trend of online abuse directed at her. This overtly tunnel visioned judgement clouding negativity occurs just as she has been at the heart of the Lionesses achievements in reaching the semi-finals out in Switzerland.
Carter, 27, was featured in 989 posts across the entirety of the tournament. To our surprise, 14% of those top posts turned out to be abusive or insulting. To their surprise, 85 percent of the comments fit the category of ‘hostile criticism. At the same time, twelve percent included direct personal abuse, and three percent included discriminatory comments. As the tournament wore on, Carter took to social media to talk about how she was subjected to racist epithets by opponents. To protect her mental health, she decided to withdraw from the digital space.
Unprecedented Social Media Backlash
Jess Carter is the undisputed star of the show. She was mentioned in 9.8% of all analyzed posts, almost twice as much as the second most mentioned player, the defender Lucy Bronze. In fact, during the four hours around England’s match against Sweden alone, fans sent out an astounding 10,110 tweets. Of those, 6.8% were marked as abusive or insulting. Next to Carter, the players who have faced the worst toxicity levels out there are Keira Walsh and Lauren James.
The follow-up analysis revealed the most surprising finding of all. A whopping 91% of the abusive users who attacked Carter were located in the UK. On these users, 75% were male and 25% were female. Alarmingly, fully 27% of the users who posted abusive content targeted her with more than one attack of hostility. SentientSports keeping a close eye on continuously available modeling from public sources and social media. In addition, they left DMs out of their analysis, meaning that the real numbers of abusive instances reported might be even greater.
A Call to Action Against Online Abuse
As the crisis has deepened, demand for urgent action has grown louder. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy highlighted that the Online Safety Act mandates tech companies to address abusive behaviors on their platforms. She stated, “We’ve introduced new laws so that platforms are under a legal obligation to take down that sort of disgusting content immediately.”
In response to her experiences, Jess Carter expressed frustration with social media platforms for failing to implement effective measures against online abuse. Where we want to really focus is what the actual solution is, what that should look like and how we can actually use technology to drive that solution. The large social media companies are not equipping us with the tools to even be able to do that,” she stated.
Carter emphasized the need for stricter regulations, stating, “If you racially abuse a player in a stadium, you’ll be banned from that stadium – we need to do the same online.” Her frustrations are reflective of a larger issue that, along with sexism, tribalism in football culture can further intensify the online hostility.
Support from Team and Management
England’s manager, Sarina Wiegman, came out in support of Carter amidst these trying times. She affirmed that the Lionesses aimed to “send a message to the world” through their actions on and off the pitch. Wiegman promised fans they can still expect to see Carter “ready to perform” as England get set for their mouthwatering semi-final clash against Italy.
That culture of support among teammates and coaches is especially important given the harsh and often cruel scrutiny and criticism high-profile players like Carter receive. Dr. Ryan Beal, an expert on sports psychology, noted: “There’s definitely more of a tribal nature behind any football abuse in both the men’s and women’s game, but unfortunately, the women’s game has the sexism angle, which is definitely driving a lot of it.”
Leave a Reply