Prince Harry, Meghan Markle on Need for Safer Social Media Platforms: “People, Specifically Children, Are Dying”

Kirsten Chuba
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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle opened up about their fight to make social media a safer place, and the impact the internet has had on their own family, during a rare public appearance on Tuesday.

The couple took part in Project Healthy Minds’ second-annual World Mental Health Day Festival in New York, joining Carson Daly and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy for “The Archewell Foundation Parents’ Summit: Mental Wellness in a Digital Age” panel. The conversation served as a discussion on building community and creating positive change for a safer online world for young people.

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Markle and Prince Harry founded the Archwell Foundation with a mission to build a better world online, to restore trust in information and to uplift communities. Their conversation followed stories from parents whose children committed suicide after negative experiences with social media and engaging with dark content presented online. The couple embraced the parents — who work with the foundation to raise awareness — as they left the stage.

“I can’t start without thanking all the parents, the mothers and fathers that have been here today, for being with us physically here today but being on this journey for the last year and creating this community of shared experience,” Prince Harry said after taking the stage. “We know it’s not easy for you guys to be here so thank you very much.”

Markle added that when meeting some of the families a year ago, “at that time it was impossible to not be in tears” when hearing their stories. “As parents, though our kids are really young — they’re two and a half and four and a half — social media is not going away, and I think by design there’s an entry point that’s supposed to be positive and creating community,” she continued. “Something has devolved and there’s no way to hear that and not try to help these families have their stories be heard.”

The Duchess of Sussex noted that “being a mom is the most important thing in my entire life, outside of, of course, being a wife to this one” — nodding to the Duke — and although their children are young, the couple knows that they will eventually have to deal with their internet use.

“I also feel frightened by how it’s continuing to change and this will be in front of us… it worries me, but I’m also given a lot of hope and a lot of energy by the progress we’ve made in the past year, being able to have these incredible parents, these survivors of this experience, to share their stories. It allows us to continue to learn and the more information we have, the more information gathering we’re able to do, the more we can have these high-level conversations and try to move the needle a little bit,” Markle said.

She added that they are actively working behind the scenes to find solutions, as Prince Harry noted, “There’s a reason why there’s no one else working in this space because [of] the size and the power of these [tech] companies. I think people are scared and feel helpless. I think we understand that, but there’s nothing wrong with these kids. Any one of us in this room to grow up with social media would probably react, definitely react, the same way. I think we need to get out of this idea that young kids, there’s something wrong with them. No, it’s the world that we’re allowing to create around them.”

He said there are thousands of families looking for accountability after their children have taken their lives, so “we’re already way behind actually solving the problem.” But since social media clearly isn’t going away, he called for the platforms to “stop sending children content that you wouldn’t want your own children to see. I think that’s a very simple request, and it’s an easy fix.”

“If the shareholders of these companies can accept that they’re going to get a little less profit out of it to make it a safe space, then that would stop the suffering,” he added, saying the pushback from the social media companies is “‘Well, you don’t really understand,’ because how can we understand when you aren’t being transparent?” Markle chimed in that when cars were first invented, there were no seatbelts or other protective measures, but once people started dying safeguards were put in place.

“As we watch the evolution of social media and the internet, what are those same modifications we need to make to ensure that, just like that car, we are adapting to the times because people are getting hurt and people, specifically children, are dying? How do we fix that?” she asked. “I think it will take all of us on so many different levels, from a grassroots level, of course probably the policy, to be able to keep our families and our children safe.”

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