Prince Harry has opened up about the reason why he and his wife, Meghan Markle, refuse to show their two children’s faces online.
The Duke of Sussex, who stepped down as a senior working royal alongside Meghan back in 2020, has featured in a new episode of the Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know podcast, which dropped just yesterday (29 October).
During the interview, Harry called out AI and social media companies for ‘farming’ the brains of young people, adding that ‘there is no free will’ on the platforms.
Minhaj then asked for his thoughts on images online being manipulated with AI and whether parents should post photos of their children online.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have kept their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, identities private, with any snaps of them usually taken from behind or using an emoji to obscure their faces, though, according to a cybersecurity expert, this approach may not be the best.
“Parents can do whatever they want,” Harry responded. “But from what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard, what I’ve experienced, is you should be really really worried, concerned and cautious about putting photographs of your kids online.”
The father of two continued: “Especially now, with this surge of unregulated AI. You don’t know where it’s going to go, how it’s going to be used.
“But that’s also really sad. There’s parents watching this asking ‘well how am I supposed to share photos with people across the world’.”
Harry also said on the podcast that social media is taking ‘young men and young boys into very dark places, which should concern all of us’, noting that he and Meghan have sat down and discussed the topic a lot, and said they’ve both ‘had our fair share of beatings on social media’.
When they made the move from Old Blighty to the US, Harry explained: “We could focus on the things that are really obviously aligned to our passions and causes, and the tech industry was not one of those things.
“But what we were in search of was what is the root cause of so much suffering and pain around the world, and if we can identify that, how can we shine a light on that and the people trying to change the industry, and it was the tech industry and social media.”
Prince Harry also revealed that he and Meghan have spoken about the possibility that either Archie or Lilibet might want a mobile phone one day.
He went on: “We talk about it a lot, and I think, because of what we know, now we will be way more cautious and hesitant of allowing our kids to have access to social media, but the problem is that so many parents don’t have that awareness.
“Our goal has to be to make sure that when our children get to that age, that the situation now is not the situation then.
“The more parents that know what is happening, the more parents can protect their kids.
“People look to governments to protect them, yet we have this lawlessness within this particular industry.”
