Topics

Prince Harry and Meghan call out the harmful effects of social media on today’s youth

Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025

Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.

Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025

Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444.

Following the Gala was a festival about Mental Health

Most Popular

Zendesk says its new AI agent can solve 80% of support issues

OpenAI launches apps inside of ChatGPT

The reinforcement gap — or why some AI skills improve faster than others

Bending Spoons acquires file transfer service WeTransfer

Moxxie Ventures, led

Canva acquires Leonardo.ai to boost its generative AI efforts

Applied Intuition closes $300M secondary four months after raising $250M

Latest

Amazon

Apps

Biotech & Health

Climate

Cloud Computing

Commerce

Crypto

Enterprise

EVs

Fintech

Fundraising

Gadgets

Gaming

Google

Government & Policy

Hardware

Instagram

Layoffs

Media & Entertainment

Meta

Microsoft

Privacy

Robotics

Security

Social

Space

Startups

TikTok

Transportation

Venture

Events

Startup Battlefield

StrictlyVC

Newsletters

Podcasts

Videos

Partner Content

TechCrunch Brand Studio

Crunchboard

Prince Harry and Meghan call out the harmful effects of social media on today’s youth Dominic-Madori Davis AM PDT · October 11, 2025 The guests sipped prosecco and chattered away while dessert was served at the third annual Project Health Minds Gala on Thursday night in New York.

The evening was winding down, but there was still one big award to give out: Humanitarian of the Year, which this year would be honoring Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, for creating The Parents Network through their nonprofit Archewell Foundation. The Parents Network supports families who have been harmed

Earlier this year, it hosted an event where the faces of young children were shown on giant smartphone screens; the children had lost their lives in ways their parents believe social media contributed to.

Thursday’s Gala was hosted

“Let me share a number with you,” Prince Harry said as he and his wife took the stage to accept the award. “Four thousand. That’s how many families the Social Media Victims Law Center is currently representing.”

That number only represents the parents who have been able to link their child’s harm to social media and who have the capacity to “fight back against some of the wealthiest, most powerful corporations in the world,” said Prince Harry.

“We have witnessed the explosion of unregulated artificial intelligence, heard more and more stories from heartbroken families, and watched parents all over the world become increasingly concerned about their children’s digital lives,” he continued.

Techcrunch event Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025 Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444. Join 10k+ tech and VC leaders for growth and connections at Disrupt 2025 Netflix, Box, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — just some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don’t miss a chance to learn from the top voices in tech. Grab your ticket before doors open to save up to $444. San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025 REGISTER NOW He said these families were up against corporations and lobbyists that were spending millions to suppress the truth; that algorithms were designed to “maximize data collection at any cost,” and said that social media was preying upon children.

Then, he called out Apple for its user privacy violations and Meta for saying privacy restrictions would cost them billions. He spoke about the harms of AI and what happened when researchers, posing as children, tested out an increasingly popular AI chatbot. “They experienced a harmful interaction every five minutes,” he said.

“This wasn’t content created

The big announcement of the night was that The Parents Network would partner with ParentsTogether, another organization focused on family advocacy and online safety, to do more work protecting children from social media.

This is not the first time Prince Harry, in particular, has spoken out about social media harms. Back in April, the prince visited youth leaders in Brooklyn to talk to them about the rising influence of tech platforms, which have been incentivized

The couple’s thoughts about the influence of tech companies do not exist in isolation.

Numerous studies have shown the negative impact social media is having on young people, creating a mental health crisis and fueling a loneliness epidemic. The next day, on Friday, World Mental Health Day, Project Healthy Minds threw a festival talk about mental health. For a few of those panels, Project Health Minds teamed up with Prince Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation to hold discussions with parents, advocates, and experts about how social media has rewritten and rewritten childhood.

The first panel, simply called “How Are Young People Doing in the Digital Age,” was introduced

One panelist, Katie, spoke about how when she was just 12 years old, TikTok would fill her For You page with videos about dieting and losing weight; Katie ultimately developed an eating disorder.

Another panelist was Isabel Sunderland, the policy lead for the organization Design It For Us, which pushes for safer social media.

She recalls one day coming across an article about the Myanmar genocide, to which Meta’s platform, Facebook, was later accused of contributing. The article led her down a rabbit hole as she sought to understand how the platforms she uses every day could be used as tools that foment “hate and violence.” She always thought it was her fault that she encountered content regarding harmful topics like eating disorders.

“What I came to find through this research is that in fact, it’s designed

The next panel, focused on childhood, spoke further about the harm social media is causing children. It was introduced

It began with Jonathan Haidt, the

Anxiety is up. Depression is up. Children are struggling in school. More children find their lives to be meaningless. There is no more outside playtime. They aren’t learning social cues because they aren’t going outside. Boys are being led down the path to gambling addictions. Young people don’t know how to handle conflict in real life because they aren’t spending time in real life — only online.

And while states are trying to pass legislation, it hasn’t been without a fight — the tech lobby’s are working hard.

“Play is about brain development,” Haidt told Couric on the panel. “When animals are deprived of play in early childhood, they come out much more anxious in adulthood.”

There is even a lessening of proper boredom time — those moments one spends looking out the window during a car ride or staring aimlessly ahead while waiting in a queue. Those moments gave the brain time to rest and have now been replaced

Amy Neville, the community manager of The Parents’ Network and President of the Alexander Neville Foundation, joined the panel. She lost her son, Alexander, to an overdose, and is suing Snapchat for providing drug dealers access to her son.

“I quickly realized that families all over the United States were waking up, finding their kids dead in their bedrooms from pills purchased off of Snapchat,” she said. Her lawsuit is moving forward. “I feel like it’s a fight to the death,” she said. “I’m willing to go there.”

Another mother, Kirsten, took the stage. She is the mother of the young girl Katie, who sat on the previous panel. She spoke about how she thought she was doing everything right — checking her daughter’s phone each night and putting it away before she went to sleep. Katie still ended up in the hospital, though, with an eating disorder.

Kirsten went through text messages and search history. Someone then sent her an article about how TikTok is showing young girls’ eating disorder content.

“My husband and I, we didn’t know about the For You page,” she said. “This was not content that my daughter was seeking, but rather content that was coming to her on repeat.”

The consensus of that panel — as with both events — was more action.

Throughout the event, people called for more legislative action, more accountability from tech platforms, more speaking, and more people banding together to put boundaries between them and social media. Though harm is said to fill the presence, hope remains around the corner.

“We can and we will build the movement that all families and all children deserve,” Meghan said at the Gala. “We know that when parents come together, when communities unite, waves are made. We’ve seen it happen, and we’re watching it grow.”

Topics

Dominic-Madori Davis Senior

Dominic-Madori Davis is a senior venture capital and startup

You can contact or verify outreach from Dominic

October 27-29, 2025 San Francisco Founders: Your next big connection and investor are here.Investors: Meet startups that align with your investment goals.Innovators & Visionaries: See the future of tech before everyone else.Register now and save up to $444 (or up to 30% on groups).

Most Popular Zendesk says its new AI agent can solve 80% of support issues Russell Brandom

OpenAI launches apps inside of ChatGPT Maxwell Zeff

The reinforcement gap — or why some AI skills improve faster than others Russell Brandom

Bending Spoons acquires file transfer service WeTransfer Ivan Mehta

Moxxie Ventures, led Marina Temkin

Canva acquires Leonardo.ai to boost its generative AI efforts Kyle Wiggers

Applied Intuition closes $300M secondary four months after raising $250M Sean O'Kane

X LinkedIn Facebook Instagram youTube Mastodon Threads Bluesky TechCrunchStaffContact UsAdvertiseCrunchboard JobsSite Map Terms of ServicePrivacy PolicyRSS Terms of UseCode of Conduct OpenAI Dev DayAMDBlueskyPartifulTechCrunch DisruptTech LayoffsChatGPT © 2025 TechCrunch Media LLC.