Meghan Markle Reveals New Online Safety Initiative Is Part of Her Healing Journey During Emotional Interview

During an emotion-packed interview broadcast on Sunday, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle spoke openly about the dangers they believe social media companies such as Meta, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok have wrought. Any parent’s child “could be in the next-door room on a tablet or on a phone and can be going down these rabbit holes,” Harry said of social media. “And before you know it, within 24 hours, they could be taking their life.”

The Duke of Sussex made that dire warning during a previously publicized interview with Jane Pauley, which ran on CBS This Morning today. During the interview, the royal couple announced the launch of The Parents’ Network, an initiative from their non-profit, the Archwell Foundation that seeks to support parents and guardians who have lost children as a result of social media-based trauma, bullying, or abuse.

According to its newly launched website, parents in the US, UK, and Canada “whose children have suffered from the harmful effects of social media, from facing near-fatal harm, managing ongoing mental health difficulties, or experiencing the tragic loss of a child” will receive “crucial support” via “a no-cost, private community for parents and caregivers bound by shared experiences of social media harms.” The website also offers “parent’s guides” to popular platforms and access to small, peer-led support groups and expert-led educational events.

The effort is rooted in Meghan Markle’s own experiences as a public figure and spouse of one of the most-watched royal family members on the planet. “When you’ve been through any level of pain or trauma, I believe part of our healing journey—certainly part of mine—is being able to be really open about it,” she said.

“If me voicing what I have overcome will save someone or encourage someone in their life to really, genuinely check in on them and not assume that the appearance is good so everything is okay, then that’s worth it,” she said. “I’ll take a hit for that.”

Markle, who admitted in 2021 that she experienced suicidal ideation due to the pressures of royal scrutiny, said that she “really scraped the surface on my experience,” when working on the couple’s new initiative.

“But I do think that I would never want someone else to feel that way,” she said. “And I would never want someone else to be making those sorts of plans, and I would never want someone else to not be believed.”

In the rare joint interview, the couple said that the goal of The Parents’ Network is to help raise awareness of the silent threat of social media on children’s mental health. “One of the scariest things that we’ve learned over the course of the last 16, 17 years that social media’s been around, and more so recently, is the fact that it could happen to absolutely anybody,” Harry said, referring to cases of self-harm said to be rooted in the use of online platforms.

“Our kids are young; they’re three and five. Amazing. But all you want to do as parents is protect them,” Markle said. “And so, as we can see what’s happening in the online space, we know that there’s a lot of work to be done there, and we are just happy to be able to be a part of change for good.”

According to Harry, a key issue for new efforts is helping parents understand when their kids are struggling with social media. “At this point, we’ve got to the stage where almost every parent needs to be a first responder,” Harry said. “And even the best first responders in the world wouldn’t be able to tell the signs of possible suicide. Like, that is the terrifying piece of this.”

If you need emotional support or are in crisis, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.