On a brilliant summer day near Santa Barbara last week, a group of friends got together, met by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, better known as Harry and Meghan. It was a meeting of an exclusive club, one that no one wanted to join. Most of the parents here have lost a child – directly or indirectly – as a result of exposure to online social media.
Harry and Meghan are trying to give them, and parents like them, someplace to turn for help. It's called The Parents' Network , in association with the couple's charitable Archewell Foundation, and it officially launches today. Meghan Markle herself knows a thing or two about online bullying, and of course her husband, Harry, is no stranger to that, either .
.. or to unspeakable grief.
Pauley asked, "The central topic is the loss that these families have suffered, stories that need to be shared, because the parents who are listening who have not suffered a loss think that they couldn't. But they could." "They certainly could," Harry said.
"And that's, I think, one of the scariest things that we've learnt over the course of the last 16, 17 years that social media's been around, and more so recently, is the fact that it could happen to absolutely anybody. We always talk about in the olden days if your kids were under your roof, you knew what they were up to; at least they were safe, right? And now, they could be in the next-door room on a tablet or on a phone and can be going down these rabbit holes. And before you know it, within.