The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are calling for stronger protections for children from the dangers of social media, saying “enough is not being done”.
Prince Harry and Meghan are unveiling a memorial in New York City they say is dedicated to children who have died due to the harms of the internet.
“We want to make sure that things are changed so that… no more kids are lost to social media,” Prince Harry told BBC Breakfast in New York.
“Life is better off social media,” he said, adding he was “grateful” that his and Meghan’s children were still too young to be online.
“The easiest thing to say is to keep your kids away from social media. The sad reality is the kids who aren’t on social media normally get bullied at school because they can’t be part of the same conversation as everybody else,” Prince Harry told journalists at an Archwell Foundation event in New York.
The installation unveiled by Prince Harry and Meghan is called the Lost Screen Memorial, and is made from 50 smartphones, each displaying the screen photo of a child whose life was lost “due to the harms of social media”. It will be open for 24 hours.
The children’s images were shared by parents who are part of the Parents’ Network, set up by Prince Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation. This is a support network for parents whose children have experienced harm from social media.
Prince Harry and Meghan have been supporting families who say social media played a role in the deaths of their children.
They have backed calls to technology firms that parents should be able to gain access to information on the phones of children who have died, despite arguments about privacy.
The prince said tech firms were “getting away with it” by arguing they didn’t need to disclose information to UK families because of privacy considerations.
“You are telling a parent, you are telling a dad and a mum that they can’t have the details of what their kid was up to on social media because of the privacy of their kid. It’s wrong,” said the prince.
Meghan said the danger of social media was a global issue and “one thing we can all agree on is that children should be safe”.
She praised the parents who were speaking out.
“I think in many ways what we see through these parents is the hope and the promise of something better, because… they just want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” said Meghan.
“We’re just grateful that our kids are too young to be on social media at this point,” said Prince Harry.
She believes her 14-year-old son Jools died after an online challenge went wrong in 2022 and his social media accounts could provide the evidence needed. An inquest into his death found he took his own life.
She was among a group of British parents who took their own action, separate to the Archewell Foundation, in staging a protest outside Meta’s offices on Thursday.
Earlier in the week she told BBC Breakfast: “It’s too late for our son Jools, but there are plenty of other children around the world that we still need to help. This is a massive issue globally.
“There was nothing that gave us any indication that there was a problem,” said Ellen, who now wants to warn other parents that “you don’t know what your children are looking at”.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has said it shares the goal of keeping teens safe online. The firm said it had recently introduced “teen accounts” with enhanced protections.
“We believe teens deserve consistent protections across all the different apps they use – not just our platforms,” Meta said in a statement.
In the UK on Thursday, the media regulator Ofcom published measures intended to improve protections for children online, including requiring tougher age checks and more robust action to prevent children accessing harmful content.
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