Meghan Markle is speaking out about the detrimental effects of social media on mental health — and sharing the ways trolling has affected her over the years.
Meghan, 44, and her husband, Prince Harry, visited the mental health charity Batyr at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne as part of their Australia trip on Thursday, April 16. During a discussion with young people at the event, Meghan said she was “bullied and attacked” every day on social media for a decade and described herself as once “the most trolled person in the entire world.” (She previously made similar claims during a 2020 podcast interview.)
“Now, I’m still here,” she told the audience on Thursday, per PA Media. “And when I think of all of you and what you’re experiencing, I think so much of that is having to realize that you know that industry, that billion-dollar industry, that is completely anchored and predicated on cruelty to get clicks — that’s not going to change. So you have to be stronger than that.”
The Duchess of Sussex went on to say that social media companies are “not incentivized to stop” trolling activity, noting that she likes to be a listener for younger people because their experience “rings true for me in a very real way.”
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Harry, meanwhile, said that social media has “led to so much loneliness for so many people,” adding that he’d personally found relief in therapy.
“I waited until I was literally in the fetal position, much older, lying on the kitchen floor,” the Duke of Sussex, 41, recalled. “Until I was like, ‘OK, maybe this therapy thing — maybe I should try it.’”
Earlier this week, Harry spoke candidly about feeling out of sync during the early days of parenthood. He became a father in 2019 when he and Meghan welcomed son Prince Archie, now 6. They are also the parents of daughter Princess Lilibet, 4.
“Certainly I felt a disconnection because my wife was the one creating life, and I was there to witness it,” Harry shared during a Movember event in Melbourne on Wednesday, April 15.
He went on to explain that he sought out therapy in order to make sure he was ready to be as present as possible for his children.
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“Certainly, from a therapy standpoint, you want to be the best version of yourself for your kids,” he explained. “And I knew that I had stuff from the past that I needed to deal with and therefore, prepare myself to basically cleanse myself of the past. I think the biggest tip that I was given from my therapist in the U.K. was just be aware of how you feel once the baby is born.”
Harry also said that he thinks of his kids as an “upgrade,” meaning that he wants them to have an even better and more supportive upbringing than he did.
“That’s not how I was taught, but that was my take on it — not to say I was an upgrade of my dad or that my kids are an upgrade of me,” he continued. “That’s the approach that I take, to know that with the world the way that it goes, the kids that we bring up in today’s world need to be an upgrade.”
