On the evening of October 9, at the third annual charity dinner of the "Healthy Mind Project" in New York, guests enjoyed desserts while chatting. As the dinner comes to an end, this year's "Humanitarian Award" will be awarded on site. The winners are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex - Prince Harry and Meghan. They were honored for establishing the Parent Network through their own nonprofit, the Archewell Foundation, to provide support for families harmed by social media.
Earlier this year, Parent Network held an event where giant smartphone screens were put up to show families who had lost children due to the negative influence of social media. Many parents firmly believe that social platforms are closely related to tragedies.
The dinner was hosted by the "Healthy Mind Project", a public welfare organization dedicated to youth mental health, and was followed by related theme meetings. The event directly addresses the current impact of social media on the relationship between young people and their parents, and reveals the serious consequences of the digital world on young people's mental health.
Prince Harry made a speech when accepting the award: "I want to share a number with you: four thousand. This is the number of families currently being represented by the Social Media Victims Legal Center." He pointed out that this is only the number of families who can directly link their children's harm to social media and have the ability to "fight against the richest and most powerful companies in the world."
Prince Harry emphasized that parents are faced with huge capital and lobbying power. These companies spend millions of dollars to suppress the truth, while related algorithms "maximize data collection at any cost" and even ruthlessly target minors. He directly named Apple's user privacy breaches, and Meta's executives threatened that privacy protection would cause billions of losses to the company. He also talked about the potential harm of artificial intelligence, citing the example of a researcher who tested a popular AI chatbot as a child and encountered harmful interactions every five minutes. "This is not third-party content, but generated by the autonomous AI of these technology companies to advance their own depraved internal control policies."
Another major announcement that night was that the Parents Network would cooperate with the ParentsTogether organization, which focuses on family rights and online safety, to once again strengthen its investment in child protection on social media.
In fact, this is not the first time that Prince Harry has publicly called on social platforms to take responsibility. In April this year, he met with a youth community in Brooklyn to discuss the issue of technology platforms being driven by profits and ignoring security. In January this year, he and Meghan also criticized Meta for changing its "fact-checking" policy and destroying the space for free speech.
The influence of technology companies does not only exist in personal statements. A large number of studies have proven that social media is having a negative impact on teenagers, causing psychological crises and exacerbating the epidemic of loneliness. On the second day of World Mental Health Day, the Healthy Mind Project held a special lecture and collaborated with Harry and Meghan's Archewell Foundation to invite parents, advocates and experts to discuss the "rewriting and reshaping" of childhood by social media.
Mental Health Festival Special Discussion:
The first was a discussion session on "The Current Situation of Youth in the Digital Era", which was opened by Prince Harry. A young man named Katie said that when she was 12 years old, her TikTok personalized recommendation column was full of weight loss and dieting videos, which eventually led to her suffering from an eating disorder.
The second speaker was Isabel Sunderland, head of policy at Design It For Us. She was deeply concerned after seeing reports on Facebook about the genocide in Myanmar. The investigation found that the platform did not "passively spread" these harmful contents, but deliberately pushed them through algorithms to increase addiction and retention time. "In the end, it was discovered that this is actually an addiction and addiction mechanism designed by social media companies."
The subsequent topic of "Childhood Reshaping and Its Contribution to the International Mental Health Crisis" was hosted by Megan, and Jonathan Haidt, the famous author of "The Anxious Generation" shared the research results. He said that adolescent anxiety, depression, and academic difficulties are generally on the rise. Many children believe that life has lost meaning and lack outdoor activities and real-life interactions, resulting in the loss of social skills. Today, boys are even more likely to engage in online gambling and have less ability to handle real-life conflicts—because they live exclusively online. Although some states have tried to push for relevant legislation, technology giants have continued to block it.
Jonathan Haidt added, "Games and play are crucial to brain development. If you are deprived of the opportunity to play in childhood, you will be more prone to anxiety as an adult." He pointed out that even the necessary "boring time" such as waiting and daze has been replaced by smart devices, depriving the brain of space to rest and reorganize.
Parents Network community manager Amy Neville also participated in the event. She cited her own experience as an example. Her son unfortunately passed away because he met a drug dealer on a social platform. She is now suing the platform, accusing it of promoting the spread of drugs. "Countless families across the United States wake up early in the morning and find their children dead in their bedrooms, all because of drugs purchased through social media." She vowed to "fight to the end," "even to the end."
Another mother, Kirsten, also shared her story. She checked her daughter's cell phone every day and put it away on time, but she still couldn't prevent her daughter from being hospitalized for an eating disorder. She didn’t realize the seriousness of the problem until she received a report about TikTok pushing content about eating disorders among teenagers. "We don't understand TikTok's 'For You' column at all. My daughter did not actively search for these contents, but was repeatedly pushed by the platform."
The consensus from the panel discussions was that more interventions are needed. All walks of life are calling for legislative action, technology platforms to strengthen accountability, and communities to actively speak out—to promote clear boundaries in the social media environment and protect the health of young people. Although risks are everywhere, hope has quietly sprouted.
Meghan concluded at the dinner: "We have the ability to build a safe and positive environment for all families and all children. When parents unite and the community works together, we can gather strength. We have seen the hope of change and will continue to promote change."