Royal Couple Breaks Silence on 'Quitting' Social Media

 Prince Harry has responded to the reports that claimed the royal couple were quitting social media due to the online hate and wouldn’t return back anytime soon. In an interview that was published on Friday by Fast Company, the Duke of Sussex said, “We have no social media to quit in the first place.” Harry additionally informed that the couple is away from online media for the past 10 months.

“We woke up one morning a couple of weeks back to see a Rupert Murdoch newspaper saying we were evidently quitting social media,” said Prince Harry to the Fast Company’s Katharine Schwab. “It was a ‘news’ to me and my wife,” he added.

The Royal couple says they are well aware of the impact of social media. Recently, Harry blamed social media for playing a massive role in the U.S Capitol riots that happened on January 6. “We know what happens when the real-world misinformation is disregarded. There was literally an attack on the democracy in the United States, organised on social media, which is an issue of violent extremism," said Harry in the interview.

The Duke of Sussex further spoke about the role that social media plays in violence, as when it happened in the human rights issue of Rohingya people. He also discussed the massive destruction in the Amazon forest in Brazil which was a result of the misinformation spread on social media. However, Harry additionally said that social media is an essential means of connecting and communicating with the community, despite its well-documented ills.

“We will revisit social media when it feels right for us,” said Harry. “At present, we are out of our energy as we are into learning about this space and how we can help,” he further added.

The royal couple who announced their stepback as the working members of the royal family in January 2020, paused their activity on their record-breaking Sussex Royal Instagram account last March. 

Meghan Markle and his 36-year-old Duke of Sussex have faced social media hate since the beginning of their relationship. The duo recalls the “well-documented harassment” they faced online in the U.K which made Markle feel like she was the “most trolled person in the whole world”.