Harry and Meghan Talk Cyberbullying in Interview

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex spoke with Jane Pauley for ‘CBS Sunday Morning,’ where Meghan said, “Our kids are young…but all you want to do as parents is protect them”.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are continuing their campaign for online safety.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex sat down with Jane Pauley for a new interview that will air on CBS Sunday Morning on August 4, Meghan’s 43rd birthday. In a preview clip released by the network on August 1, Meghan spoke about her desire to protect their two children, 5-year-old Prince Archie and 3-year-old Princess Lilibet, from harmful online content.

“Our kids are young — they’re 3 and 5. They’re amazing,” she said with a smile. “But all you want to do as parents is protect them.”

“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’re just happy to be able to be a part of change for good,” Meghan continued.

Pauley then said, “You hope that when your children ask for help, someone, you know, is there to give it.”

Prince Harry, 39, chimed in, “If you know how to help.”

“At this point, we’ve got to the stage where every parent needs to be a first responder,” Harry continued. “And even the best first responders in the world wouldn’t be able to tell the signs of possible suicide. That is the terrifying piece of this.”

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Archewell Foundation has worked with families to provide a support network for parents dealing with grief or who have children managing serious mental health conditions as a result of their exposure to harmful online content.

Their newly-announced trip to Colombia will take place ahead of the first World Ministerial Conference on the Elimination of Violence Against Children, being held in the South American country this November.

Francia Márquez, Colombia’s vice president and the first Black woman to hold the position, said in a statement, “The conference will present a global framework for creating safer physical and virtual spaces, addressing issues such as cyberbullying, online exploitation and the impact of these threats on mental health. It will offer practical solutions and commitments for countries around the world. During their visit, the Duke and Duchess, as well as the Archewell Foundation, will take part in a number of activities related to this important topic.”

In February, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex expressed their support following the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on online safety for children in a statement published on the Archewell Foundation’s website.

“We applaud the bravery and determination of the thousands of parents around the country whose advocacy resulted in this hearing,” they said. “Over the past few years, we have spent time with many of these families, listening to their heartache and their hopes for the urgent change that is needed in the online space. This is an issue that transcends division and party lines, as we saw today at the Senate hearing. The best parenting in the world cannot keep children safe from these platforms. As one of the fathers shared with us: ‘If love could have saved them, all of our children would still be here.’ This is not the time to pass the buck of responsibility. It’s the time to make necessary change at the source to keep our children safe.”

Meghan has also spoken about being on the receiving end of online abuse. At the SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas, in March, she said there’s a lot of work to be done to keep people safe online, adding that she finds it “disturbing” how “much of the hate is women completely spewing it to other women.”

She said that while there are advantages to social media and online space, platforms have “quite a bit of hate and rhetoric and incentives people to create pages where they can churn out very, very inciting comments and conspiracy theories that can have a tremendously negative effect on someone’s mental health, on their physical safety.”

The Duchess of Sussex said that “the bulk of the bullying and abuse” she experienced online came while she was pregnant with her children.

“You just think about that, and to really wrap your head around why people would be so hateful. It’s not catty, it’s cruel. And why you would do that, certainly, when you’re pregnant, with a newborn, we all know as moms, it’s such a tender and sacred time,” she said. “I think you know, you could either succumb to it, nearly succumb to how painful that it is, and maybe in some regards, because I was pregnant, that mammalian instinct just kicked in, you do everything you can to protect your child, and as a result, protect yourself too.”