Podcast 52 – Meghan Markle & Prince Harry are proven right to have concerns about Social Media.

Kind thoughts for Meghan Markle

Last year Meghan and Harry hosted an edition of the TIME100 Talks Series. During their talk Meghan, Harry and several of their guests discussed how harms on social media don’t just live on the platforms, but often extend to shaping behaviours that people then act upon.
This theory has been proven to be correct. We all witnessed on TV this week in Washington the harm that is caused by propaganda messaging posted on social media.

One of Meghan and Harry’s guests on their TIME 100 show was Tristan Harris co-founder of the Centre for Humane Technology. This is one of the groups Meghan and Harry have since chosen to work with under their Archewell Foundation.

Following the social unrest that took place at Capitol Hill, Tristan released a press statement saying that the events this week that the whole world witnessed, were the consequences of a broken, yet highly profitable business model, that rewards self-reinforcing cycles of outrage, rumours, and political and racial division.

His organization the Centre for Humane Technology, https://www.humanetech.com/ is trying to make social media platforms more accountable for the negative effects that they cause in society, be it social unrest, or teenagers feeling increasingly suicidal or depressed due to their social media use.

I took some time this week to watch Tristan's documentary The Social Dilemma. It raises many interesting and somewhat scary points about how much we are manipulated and basically used by social media platforms. In the documentary many techies who used to work for the big tech companies describe exactly how what we view on social media has been manipulated. Many of the people in the film were the techies behind the software used to do so. Interestingly many of them don’t want their kids anywhere near social media.

At the time of their TIME 100 talk Meghan and Harry were derided in the media for calling out social media's "global crisis of hate". Maybe Meghan and Harry can be excused for a little “we told you so” given the tragic events this past week.

Check out my blog at www.kindthoughtsformeghanmarkle.com

Show written and produced by Jeanette Songolo.
Please keep listening for future podcasts on all things Meghan, Harry, Archie and Lili and in the meantime watch out for other posts on all things Sussex on my blog at https://www.kindthoughtsformeghanmarkle.com/