Emotional Prince Harry has Archie and Lilibet in mind as he gives speech on dangers of social media
A visibly teary Prince Harry shared a heartfelt anecdote about his own kids as he gave a stirring speech about the perils of social media for youth at a forum in New York.
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Prince Harry has revealed just like millions of parents around the world he has a photo of beloved children as the lock screen on his phone.
Harry shared the heartwarming anecdote about Prince Archie, five, and Princess Lilibet, three, who he shares with wife Meghan Markle as he spoke at the annual conference of former US president Bill Clinton’s non-profit the Clinton Global Initiative in New York on Tuesday.
“My lock screen is a picture of my kids. What’s yours?” Harry asked the crowd as behind him, a series of lock screens featuring smiling children appeared.
Becoming tearful, the prince revealed the harrowing reason why the children on the big screen were no longer alive.
“These children and thousands more meant the world to their families. The beautiful faces you see before you, their smiles, their dreams, all lost, all too soon and all because of social media,” Harry said.
The 40-year-old Duke of Sussex said the loss of so many young lives is what drove him to launch Archewell Foundation’s Parents Network, which assists families who have been torn apart by the dark side of social media.
“I stand before you today to speak about the pervasive threat that our online world poses to us, especially our children,” Harry said.
“If we allow the status quo to remain in an age where our lives are intertwined with technology, we cannot afford to only see the online world as a space for profitability, competition, and rapid growth instead.
“These platforms are designed to create addiction. Young people are kept there by mindless, endless, numbing, scrolling, being force fed content that no child should ever be exposed to. I, like many of you, do not grow up with a phone. Young people today possess an incredible understanding of technology that older generations may struggle to grasp.”
Speaking to many of the same points raised by News Corp Australia’s Let Them Be Kids campaign, Harry said it was up to adults to put mechanisms in place to protect our youth online.
“Some say kids will be kids and well, that may well be true,” Harry said.
“Kids may get into trouble. I know a thing or two about that. But our kids are being targeted. “The harmful effects of social media are made by design.”
The prince’s speech was part of the What’s Working segment of the conference which included contributions from former President Clinton, Clinton Foundation Vice Chair Chelsea Clinton and World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres.
Harry arrived in New York on Sunday for a whirlwind visit timed to coincide with both the UN General Assembly High-level Week and Climate Week.
His NYC trip comes as a judge ruled his US visa application should remain private, despite his admission to taking drugs in his 2023 memoir.
The Duke of Sussex, who recently turned 40, described using marijuana, cocaine and psychedelic mushrooms in his memoir Spare.
Prince Harry wrote that cocaine “didn’t do anything” for him, and that “marijuana is different, that actually really did help me.”
Last year, a lawsuit was brought against the Department of Homeland Security by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which wanted to compel the US government to release records showing whether the Duke had disclosed his drug usage before being allowed a visa into the country.
Judge Carl Nichols ruled that “the public does not have a strong interest in disclosure of the duke’s immigration records”.
“Like any foreign national, the duke has a legitimate privacy interest in his immigration status,” the judge said.
“And the duke’s public statements about his travel and drug use did not disclose, and therefore did not eliminate his interest in keeping private, specific information regarding his immigration status, applications, or other materials.”
The Prince currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife Meghan Markle and their two young children, after the couple stepped back from royal duties in 2020.
The judge noted that Prince Harry did share “intimate details of his life” and “numerous instances” of taking drugs.
Application forms for US visas ask about current and past drug use and admission of drug use can lead to visas being rejected.
The Heritage Foundation argued in its lawsuit that US law “generally renders such a person inadmissable for entry” but the judge said the public’s interest in Prince Harry’s immigration records is “outweighed by the duke’s privacy interest” and ruled the documents should remain private.
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Originally published as Emotional Prince Harry has Archie and Lilibet in mind as he gives speech on dangers of social media
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