Meghan Markle recalled the online hatred she received during her pregnancy and says it’s the reason why she is currently keeping a distance from social media.
The Duchess of Sussex, 42, spoke at the SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas, and recalled experiencing the worst abuse on social media when she was expecting son Prince Archie, 4, and daughter Prince Lilibet, 2.
During the “Breaking Barriers, Shaping Narratives: How Women Lead On and Off the Screen” discussion, the conference’s Opening Day Keynote Panel, moderator Errin Haines asked Markle, “Social media really has become the place for women and girls to, be scrutinized, objectified, bullied, and unfortunately I know this is something you are all too familiar with. How have you been able to manage the seemingly endless toxicity that comes at you?”
“Yes, social media is an environment that I think has a lot of that. You know I think, it’s really interesting as I can reflect on it, I keep my distance from it right now just for my own well-being, but the bulk of the bullying and abuse that I was experiencing on social media and online was when I was pregnant with Archie and Lili, and with a newborn with each of them,” she responded.
“You just think about that, and to really wrap your head around why people would be so hateful. It’s not catty, it’s cruel. And why you would do that, certainly, when you’re pregnant, with a newborn, we all know as moms, it’s such a tender and sacred time,” she said.
“I think you know, you could either succumb to it, nearly succumb to how painful that it is, and maybe in some regards, because I was pregnant, that mammalian instinct just kicked in, you do everything you can to protect your child, and as a result, protect yourself too,” she continued.
Meghan believes there’s a lot of work to be done when it comes to keeping people safe online. She finds it “disturbing” how “much of the hate is women completely spewing it to other women.”
“I cannot make sense of that, because I understand that there are certain platforms, today is a really good example, this is being streamed on one of those platforms, and it’s also fantastic because people are going to have access to hear all of this brilliance and all of this insight, and at the same time, it’s a platform that has quite a bit of hate and rhetoric and incentives people to create pages where they can churn out very, very inciting comments and conspiracy theories that can have a tremendously negative effect on someone’s mental health, on their physical safety,” she added.
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