Photo: Instagram/@sussexroyal
Meghan Markle has revealed the reason why she has avoided social media and may never return to it. In a virtual interview with Fortune for its “Most Powerful Next Gen Summit” on Tuesday, October 13, the Duchess of Sussex talked about her “personal choice” to not have any social media accounts, the reason being self-preservation.
“For my own self-preservation, I have not been on social media for a very long time,” she said. “I had a personal account years ago, which I closed down and then we had one through the institution and our office that was in the UK that wasn’t managed by us —that was a whole team — and so I think that comes with the territory for the job you have.”
“I’ve made a personal choice to not have any account, so I don’t know what’s out there, and many ways that’s helpful for me,” she added before going on to talk about social media addiction and its impact on mental health. “I have a lot of concerns for people that have become obsessed with it. And it is so much a part of our daily culture for so many people that it’s an addiction like many others. There are very few things in this world where you call the person who is engaging with it a user.”
She continued to give her advice to other women in leadership positions and said, “As you’re out there building your brand, as you are out there engaging with friends online, just be conscious of what you’re doing. Understand that it is not limited to that one moment—that you are creating an echo chamber for yourself.” Markle’s advice is most probably coming from a place of experience as the former Suits star recently opened up about being “the most trolled person in the world” in 2019. “[For] eight months of that, I wasn’t even visible, I was on maternity leave with the baby. But what was able to be manufactured and churned out, it’s almost unsurvivable, it’s so big you can’t even think what that feels like,” she had said.
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