David Beckham was not ‘happy’ on social media during his football days

Soccer star David Beckham touched on the dangers of social media in a conversation with CNBC host Tanya Breyer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, about how his family deals with online bullying.

The 49-year-old president and owner of American soccer club Inter Miami CF looks back on his football career from 1992 to 2013 and how he handled the pressure of being sent off during the game.

“I’m so glad social media didn’t exist back then because it was bad back then,” Beckham said. “What people were saying to me was mean.”

Beckham and his wife, Victoria, have four children, who he says are under a lot of pressure from social media. The eldest Beckham, Brooklyn, is 25 years old, while the youngest, Harper, is 13.

“We’ll keep it that way for a while,” the former soccer player said, adding that his daughter is not on any social media platform, but the children have popular social media accounts.

“I want everyone to text them and everyone sits down with me and Victoria and says, ‘How do we handle this dad?’ Don’t turn to them and read it, we all read it, and violence is not only with children, it is with adults,” he said.

Unfortunately, we live in a culture where bullying seems to be acceptable and not acceptable at all. So I think social media platforms have a real responsibility to protect people from that.

Beckham, who has more than 88 million followers on Instagram, says he feels responsible for his content and that every post has “real thought” behind it.

“A clear commercial post will go up, but I’m above every post, every single statement because I think it’s important,” he said.

“With a social media like this, there’s a lot of responsibility involved and there are bad parts of social media and good parts of social media. What we’re trying to do with my followers and my social media platform is for good,” he added.

Beckham, the first participant in the WEF, received on Monday Crystal Award – “Cultural leaders who have made significant contributions to promoting social, environmental and creative development” – recognized for their work in protecting vulnerable children. Since 2005, he has served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.