Meghan Markle, 39, gave the public another glimpse inside her and husband Prince Harry‘s $14 million mansion in Montecito, CA when she sat down for a new video interview about the effects of social media with Fortune Magazine for their Most Powerful Women Summit, and looked incredible. The Duchess of Sussex wore a white and dark-colored strappy patterned top and had her long dark locks tied back into a low ponytail that was swept to one side as she sat down on a white sofa in the clip. In the background, a cute vase of orange and pink flowers could be seen in the background along with a pile of books stacked on top of each other, giving off a cozy yet modern vibe.
The video, which was posted to Fortune‘s Twitter account on Oct. 13, showed Meghan answering a question about how she has managed the sometimes negative effects of social media and what advice she would give to young people trying to establish their own brands on sites such as Instagram. “I have for my own self preservation, I have not been on social media for a very long time,” Meghan told the outlet. “I’d had a personal years ago, which I closed down, and then we had one through the institution and our office that was in the U.K. separate. That wasn’t managed by us, that was a whole team and so I think that comes with the territory for the job that you have. I’ve made a personal choice to not have any account.”
After further explaining that she “doesn’t know what’s out there” and it’s “helpful” for her in “many ways,” Meghan admitted she has “a lot of concerns for people” who are “users” of social media and “become obsessed with it”, even calling it an “addiction.” “People who are addicted to drugs are called ‘users’ and people who are on social media are called ‘users’ and there is something algorithmically, that is creating this obsession that I think is very unhealthy for a lot of people,” she added before advising others to be “conscious” of how they use it.
“As you are out there building your brands, as you are out there engaging with your friends online, just be conscious of what you’re doing and understand that it is not limited to that one moment,” she explained. “You are creating an echo chamber for yourself so the more that you engage with things that are negative, not just for other people that you might not know, but what’s doing to you as a human being will really have lasting effects and there is an alternative to engaging in that kind of stuff, so just be really conscious and responsible.”
Meghan’s opinions on social media come after she talked candidly about her mental health and being “the most trolled person in the world” in 2019, during the Teenager Therapy podcast on World Mental Health Day. “What was able to just be manufactured and churned out, it’s almost unsurvivable,” she said about the negative effects the trolling had on her, in the podcast episode. “That’s so big, you can’t even think of what that feels like. Because I don’t care if you’re 15 or 25, if people are saying things about you that aren’t true, what that does to your mental and emotional health is so damaging.”
She also reminded the public that although the spotlight on her increased dramatically when she married Prince Harry in 2018 and became a part of the royal family, she’s still human just like the rest of us. “So I think from my standpoint, and part of the work that we do, is our own personal experiences and being able to talk to people, and understand that even through our experiences [are] unique to us and obviously can seem very different to what people experience on the day to day, it’s still a very human experience and that’s universal,” she said. “We all know what it feels like to have our feelings hurt. We all know what it feels like to be isolated or the other … We are all figuring it out.”
