How Roger Federer Controls His Social Media Screen Time

  • Posted: Oct 10, 2019

How Roger Federer Controls His Social Media Screen Time

Oct102019

Swiss faces Zverev for place in the Shanghai SF

In a lot of ways, Roger Federer is very unlike the millions of us who have smartphones. The 38-year-old has won 102 tour-level titles and earned more $127 million in prize money.

In other ways, however, he is exactly like us: He, too, enjoys social media but seeks to limit his screen time, especially when he’s around loved ones.

That’s why Federer takes breaks from social media. For instance, from 5 July to 16 September – a 10-week stretch – he tweeted zero times.

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“I took a nice break after Wimbledon, because I was spending a lot of time with the family,” Federer said. “I was just tired.”

From 24 September to 1 October, he also posted zero times, not even sharing goofy photos or retweeting witty comments from fans.

But the 28-time ATP Masters 1000 champion, upon hitting the road again, ramped up his tweeting and has continued this week at the Rolex Shanghai Masters, where he will face Alexander Zverev on Friday for a place in the semi-finals.

“It’s the energy level and obviously being around my kids. [I] try to be good role model [by] not having my phone in my hand the whole time,” Federer said. “My kids are not here, so they don’t read the press, so they don’t know I’m on the phone. I have always enjoyed interacting through social media with the fans.”

Federer has been doing plenty of that since 2 October, when he tweeted or retweeted posts 25 times. He’s retweeted photos of himself with fans, tried to pump up students before exams and applauded some of his colleagues, including Colombians Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah, who on Wednesday clinched the year-end No. 1 ATP Doubles Team Ranking for the first time.

“I always said, and I swore to myself, I will never start on social media if I have to post every day two times. That’s just not the idea for me. Even though people say that’s what you’ve got to do, but I don’t care what I have to do because I’m not on social media to make money or anything,” Federer said.

“I’m just there to have fun with the fans and it’s fun to interact. I have been doing it when I’m on the massage table or hanging out in the morning and not doing anything besides just having good conversations with my team.”

His social media strategy, if you will, seems to have worked out OK. Federer (@rogerfederer) currently has 12.7 million followers on Twitter, four million more than Novak Djokovic (@djokernole) but three million fewer than Rafael Nadal (@rafaelnadal).

Federer is pursuing his 29th Masters 1000 title, which would draw him closer to his two long-time rivals on the all-time Masters 1000 titles leaderboard. But will Federer be tweeting as the season’s penultimate Masters 1000 event heads into the weekend?

“Now my parents are here, so probably that’s going to slow down just a little bit because I want to spend quality time with them,” Federer said. “So social media goes again probably on the side a little bit for the rest of the week.”

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