Guests sipped prosecco and chattered as dessert was served at the third annual Project Healthy Minds Gala on Thursday. The evening was winding down, but one significant award remained: the Humanitarian of the Year. This year, the honor went to Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, for creating The Parents Network through their nonprofit Archewell Foundation. The Parents Network supports families who have been harmed by social media. Earlier this year, the network hosted an event where the faces of young children were shown on giant smartphone screens; these children had lost their lives in ways their parents believe social media contributed to.
Thursday’s Gala was hosted by the nonprofit Project Healthy Minds, which provides free access to mental health services, with a special focus on young people struggling in a world dominated by technology. The event, and a conference the following day, offered a look into how young people and their parents are experiencing social media, revealing the grave impact these platforms have had on mental health.
Prince Harry opened his acceptance speech by sharing a number. He said, “Four thousand. That’s how many families the Social Media Victims Law Center is currently representing.” He explained that this number only represents the parents who have been able to link their child’s harm to social media and who have the capacity to fight back against some of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the world.
He continued, stating that we have witnessed the explosion of unregulated artificial intelligence, heard more stories from heartbroken families, and watched parents worldwide become increasingly concerned about their children’s digital lives. He said these families were up against corporations and lobbyists spending millions to suppress the truth, and that algorithms were designed to maximize data collection at any cost, preying upon children.
He called out Apple for user privacy violations and Meta for saying privacy restrictions would cost them billions. He also spoke about the harms of AI, referencing an experiment where researchers, posing as children, tested a popular AI chatbot and experienced a harmful interaction every five minutes. He clarified that this was not third-party content, but the company’s own chatbots working to advance their own depraved internal policies.
The big announcement of the night was that The Parents Network would partner with ParentsTogether, another organization focused on family advocacy and online safety, to expand work protecting children from social media.
This is not the first time Prince Harry has spoken about social media harms. In April, he visited youth leaders in Brooklyn to discuss the rising influence of tech platforms, which he said are incentivized by profit rather than safety. In January, he and Meghan criticized Meta for undermining free speech after the platform announced changes to its fact-checking policy.
Their views on tech companies are supported by numerous studies showing the negative impact social media is having on young people, contributing to a mental health crisis and a loneliness epidemic.
The next day, on World Mental Health Day, Project Healthy Minds held a festival with talks about mental health. For several panels, Project Healthy Minds teamed up with Prince Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation to hold discussions with parents, advocates, and experts about how social media has rewritten childhood.
The first panel, introduced by Harry, was called “How Are Young People Doing in the Digital Age.” One panelist, Katie, spoke about how when she was twelve, TikTok filled her For You page with videos about dieting and losing weight, which ultimately contributed to her developing an eating disorder.
Another panelist, Isabel Sunderland, the policy lead for the organization Design It For Us, recalled reading an article about the Myanmar genocide, to which Meta’s platform, Facebook, was later accused of contributing. This led her to research how the platforms she uses daily could be tools for hate and violence. She said she once thought it was her fault she encountered harmful content, but learned it is designed by social media companies to increase addiction and time spent on their platforms.
The next panel, focused on childhood, was introduced by Meghan and moderated by journalist Katie Couric. It began with author Jonathan Haidt presenting findings from his book, The Anxious Generation. He reported that anxiety and depression are up, children are struggling in school, more find their lives meaningless, and outside playtime has vanished. He explained that children are not learning social cues because they are not going outside, boys are being led to gambling addictions, and young people do not know how to handle real-life conflict because their time is spent online.
He stated that while states are trying to pass legislation, tech lobbyists are working hard to fight it. Haidt told the panel that play is about brain development, and when animals are deprived of play in early childhood, they become more anxious in adulthood. He also noted a loss of proper boredom time, moments that allow the brain to rest, which have now been replaced by scrolling on devices.
Amy Neville, the community manager of The Parents’ Network, joined the panel. She lost her son, Alexander, to an overdose and is suing Snapchat for providing drug dealers access to her son. She said she realized that families across the United States were waking up to find their kids dead in their bedrooms from pills purchased off of Snapchat. Her lawsuit is moving forward, and she stated, “I feel like it’s a fight to the death. I’m willing to go there.”
Another mother, Kirsten, also took the stage. She is the mother of Katie from the previous panel. Kirsten spoke about how she thought she was doing everything right by checking her daughter’s phone each night, yet Katie still ended up in the hospital with an eating disorder. After going through text messages and search history, someone sent her an article about how TikTok shows young girls eating disorder content. She said, “My husband and I, we didn’t know about the For You page. This was not content that my daughter was seeking, but rather content that was coming to her on repeat.”
The consensus of the panel, and both events, was a call for more action. Throughout the event, people called for more legislative action, more accountability from tech platforms, more speaking out, and more people banding together to put boundaries between themselves and social media. While harm is pervasive, hope remains.
As Meghan said at the Gala, “We can and we will build the movement that all families and all children deserve. We know that when parents come together, when communities unite, waves are made. We’ve seen it happen, and we’re watching it grow.”