Meghan Markle is being blasted over a “hypocritical” social media post featuring her daughter, Lilibet Diana.
The Duchess of Sussex posted a picture of Lilibet before giving a speech emphasizing the risks children face on social media.
Meghan was invited to speak at a World Health Organization (WHO) event on Sunday (May 17), during which she stated that children's safety online is a “public health issue.”
Highlights
- Meghan Markle is being accused of hypocrisy after posting a picture with her daughter ahead of a speech about the dangers of the internet for children.
- She was invited to speak at a World Health Organization event honoring children who lost their lives to online harm.
- Pointing to a photo with Lilibet, critics called the duchess “tone-deaf” and accused her of exposing her four-year-old daughter.
Image credits: Getty/Harold Cunningham
“Our children are not products, they are not experiments and not expendable,” she said during the 10-minute speech where she advocated for stronger protections for children online.
The 44-year-old questioned social media companies for “shaping our children's lives” and valuing “profit over people.”
At the event in Geneva, Switzerland, Meghan also hugged grieving parents who have lost their children to digital harm.
Image credits: meghan
Hours before the speech, the duchess posted a mirror selfie of herself and her four-year-old daughter on Instagram.
The photo, which appeared to show Meghan packing for the event, was posted with the caption “Mama's little helper.”
Many interpreted the post as contradicting the message of her speech, arguing that Meghan shared photos of her children for her own convenience rather than protecting them as she had urged companies to do.
Image credits: Getty/Harold Cunningham
Tom Sykes wrote in his Substack, The Royalist, “Yes, a woman who is about to stand alongside the world’s most senior public health official and discuss the measurable, preventable harms of exposing children to social media has just exposed her own child to social media.”
“The Geneva speech is the rhetoric. The closet photograph is the reality.”
Meghan, who also shares a seven-year-old son, Archie, with Prince Harry, never posts photos in which her children’s faces are visible.
Image credits: Getty/Harold Cunningham
“The argument that Meghan does not show Lilibet’s face, and therefore protects her privacy, has become absurd. Not showing a child’s face does not prevent that child from becoming a social media star. If anything, it manufactures a curiosity gap,” Sykes wrote.
He further referred to her Instagram page as a “public-facing shop window” and accused the royal of using her children to sell products from her brand, As Ever, and to promote her Netflix series, With Love, Meghan.
Image credits: according2_taz
Image credits: meghan
Sykes claimed the recently posted mirror selfie, which showed Meghan’s closet, contained outfits worth at least $250,000, including an Armani coat with “the label clearly visible.”
He summarized, “The hypocrisy is breathtaking. It is a boastful image. It is a vain image. It is a staggeringly tone-deaf image.”
Some defended the duchess, arguing that her speech centered on children using social media, not on parents posting photos of their kids
Image credits: meghan
Many netizens shared this view, with one commenting, “Don’t use your kids on social media then go and give a speech about the dangers of social media for children.”
However, others praised Meghan’s speech as “powerful” and defended her decision to share the image of herself and Lilibet.
“Pretty stupid if people can not see the difference between a child ‘s pic not showing her face and the ongoing manipulation the digital world uses that endangers children,” one supporter noted.
Image credits: meghan
Meghan’s speech came ahead of the World Health Organization’s 79th Assembly, which takes place from 18 to 25 May.
She attended the opening of the Lost Screen Memorial, created to remember 50 children who lost their lives to online harm. The memorial was partly funded by the charities she runs with Prince Harry.
The children were remembered through illuminated lightboxes designed to look like smartphones, each displaying the lock-screen photo of a victim who passed away due to cyberbullying, s*xtortion, grooming, or exposure to other types of harmful content.
“Not statistics, not avatars, not data points, children,” Meghan said. “Each name belonged to a child who was loved beyond measure. A child whose laughter once filled a kitchen, whose shoes once waited by a front door, whose future once felt limitless.
“And now their faces ask the world questions we can no longer avoid.”
The Lost Screen Memorial honored 50 children who lost their lives after being exposed to harmful online content
She said, “Children today are being shaped by systems designed to capture attention at any cost: relentless algorithms, exploitative engagement, and endless exposure to harmful content that they are not seeking out.
“We are seeing new forms of harm emerge faster than our systems are prepared to respond, affecting children at an alarming scale and across borders.
“But these outcomes are not inevitable, and prevention begins with one simple principle: children must be safe by design, not safe by chance.”
Image credits: ericalova
Image credits: Getty/Harold Cunningham
Among those present at the event was online safety campaigner Amy Neville, whose 14-year-old son, Alexander, is among the children included in the memorial.
Prince Harry has also called for stricter protection for children online, stating at a gala in New York that keeping minors safe on the internet is “one of the most pressing issues of our time.”
People reacted to Meghan’s photo with her daughter, Lilibet, in light of her WHO speech
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