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In April 2019, professional footballers from England and Wales boycotted social media for 24 hours, but Henry is arguably the most prominent name within the sport to implement a longer-term boycott.
His decision follows a recent series of racist online abuses targeting black soccer players.
Henry, who has 2.3 million followers on Twitter, told CNN’s Darren Lewis that while social media has many benefits, some users displayed their posts in a much more sinister way.
He added: “I’m not saying it’s not good to have social media, I’m just trying to say it has to be a safe place.”
“Basically, I did what I felt and I hope I can inspire people to do the same if they feel the same.”
Muhammad Ali
“Muhammad Ali didn’t want to go to war, he didn’t wait to see if everyone was with him, that’s what he felt,” Henry said.
“Please understand that I am nowhere near that caliber […] but I said to myself: “Thierry, this is how you feel, you feel very strong.” That’s what I’ll do. To show that I’m obviously not happy with how things are going on social media. “
“Things are a little better in the stadium, but now the problem has moved to social networks, where people can hide,” he added.
“You can always say, ‘Oh, it’s hard to track who it is.’ You close that account, they can open another one, so you just move the issue.
“That problem has been going on for a long time and this is not an attack on anyone. It’s about making the place safer.”
As he talks about the abuse he and other black public figures have received online, Henry realizes that the problem of online bullying affects everyone.
He says he is concerned that his young daughter is on social media and wants platforms to treat online abuse with the same “vigor” with which they tackle copyright issues.
“When you see a comment on social networks, even if you had a million that was good, you are going to focus on the bad because that is the one that is going to hurt,” he said, noting the toxic effect that those messages can have. about someone’s mental health.
“Sometimes you try to figure it out. What should I do? Who am I? Is what they are saying, is it true? Is it true? Am I like this? Imagine a child going through those questions that I can barely sometimes deal with. “.
‘I want to see action’
Last year, Facebook and Instagram announced that they would team up to fight racism and other forms of discrimination on their platforms and assess racial bias in their algorithms.
In a statement on Friday, a spokesperson for the Facebook company said: “We do not want discriminatory abuse on Instagram and we remove it when we find it.
“Between October and December of last year we took action on 6.6 million hate speech content on Instagram, 95% of which we found before anyone reported it to us.
“We recently announced that we will take stricter action when we find out that people are breaking our direct message rules and we have created tools to help people protect themselves.
“We will continue this work and we know that these problems are bigger than us, so we are working with others to collectively drive social change through action and education.”
When asked what it was doing to prevent racist abuse on its platform, Twitter directed CNN to its recent statement that highlighted some of the measures it implemented.
“Racist behavior, abuse and harassment have absolutely no place in our service. On Twitter, protecting the health of the public conversation is essential to us, and this means making sure that Twitter is a safe place to express yourself and follow the conversation about soccer “. without fear of abuse or intimidation. ”
Since George Floyd’s death last year, football’s governing bodies have launched racism awareness campaigns and, for example, teams kneel before every English Premier League match.
Despite this, there have been widespread calls for those in power, both on social media platforms and in football, to do more to prevent and punish racist messages.
Having spent much of his career experiencing these issues and realizing that it was a problem for generations before him, Henry says it’s time to see real change.
“I’ve had enough of talking, I’ve had enough of listening, I want to see action. I want to see how we can eradicate that and how we can overcome it,” he said.
“Talking obviously doesn’t work that much. There’s a lot of awareness, a lot of campaigning, but it’s still happening, so now I want to see the people in charge, the big shots, come out and explain.
Earlier on Friday, Britain’s Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden, in a tweeted response to Henry, said: “No one should have to take social media offline for abuse.”
Dowden added: “Social media companies must do more to address this and we are introducing new laws to hold platforms accountable. This is complex and we must get it right, but I am absolutely determined to address racist abuse online.”
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