Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, speaks out about ‘hateful’ online bullying
The intense public scrutiny has often left Prince Harry and his wife Meghan on the receiving end of strong opinions. And Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, addressed that directly on Friday, criticizing a culture of bullying on social media.
“We have forgotten our humanity, and that has to change,” she said as she appeared a keynote panel at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, focusing on women’s representation in entertainment and media.
Meghan and Harry have repeatedly expressed concerns about the impact of negative media attention on them, both when they were active members of the British royal family and since they stepped back from their royal duties and moved to the United States in 2020.
Meghan said Friday that she endured the brunt of online abuse while pregnant with her children, Archie and Lilibet, and in the months after their birth.
“I’m currently distancing myself from it just for my own well-being,” Meghan said of the negative comments directed at her online, some of which she described as “hateful.”
“It’s not catty,” she said during the keynote session, which also included Brooke Shields, Katie Couric and sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen. “It’s cruel.”
In a 2022 Netflix documentary in which the couple detailed their separation from the British royal family, Meghan said she struggled with mental health issues and experienced suicidal thoughts, partly because of the harsh media attention.
On Friday, she said a cultural change was needed in social media habits. Online platforms, she said, encouraged people to express “very, very inflammatory comments and conspiracy theories that can have a hugely negative effect on someone’s mental health.
Meghan and Harry have also raised concerns about their physical safety, particularly after their car was chased by photographers in New York last May.
And the couple has had run-ins with British tabloids in court. Last month, a London court awarded Harry damages from The Mirror Group newspapers after a judge found the group guilty of “widespread and habitual” hacking of his mobile phone.
Nor are they the only members of the British royal family to attract intense media and online attention.
Speculation about the family’s well-being was particularly strong this year, when King Charles III, Harry’s father, revealed in February that he had been diagnosed with cancer, around the same time that Catherine, Princess of Wales, underwent abdominal surgery. Catherine, the wife of Prince William, Harry’s older brother, has also been the subject of online rumors during her time out of the public eye.
For her part, Meghan said at SXSW that she was particularly disturbed by “how much of the hate is women spewing it entirely at other women.
“If you read something terrible – terrible – about a woman, why do you share it with your friends?” she posited. “Why do you choose to spread that to the world?”