Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are speaking out following this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child safety, saying the issue “transcends division and party lines.”
“We applaud the bravery and determination of the thousands of parents around the country whose advocacy resulted in this hearing,” the couple said in a Wednesday statement posted on their Archewell Foundation website.
The remarks from the pair, who in 2020 stepped back from their roles as senior members of Britain’s royal family and moved to California, came after the chief executives of five major social media companies appeared before senators at the hearing earlier in the day focused on the prevalence of sexual exploitation on social media.
At one point during the at-times contentious hearing, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned his back to senators and apologized to parents and activists, expressing regret for harm their children may have suffered due to social media abuse.
“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,” Harry and Meghan said.
“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,” the couple’s statement said.
“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,” they added.
It’s not the first time that the parents of 4-year-old Archie and Lilibet, 2, have called on social media platforms to embrace policies involving content moderation aimed at children.
“For us, the priority here is to turn pain into purpose,” Harry said last year at a panel discussion that included the parents of children who died or were seriously harmed after suffering abuse through social media.