Meghan Markle On “Toxicity” Of Social Media: “We’ve Forgotten About Our Humanity” – SXSW

In a last minute added SXSW keynote panel in time for International Women’s Day —Breaking Barriers, Shaping Narratives: How Women Lead On and Off the Screen–the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, spoke about how social media has run off the rails in having a negative impact on women.

“Even if it’s making dollars, it doesn’t make sense,” said the Suits star.

Katie Couric, who was also on the panel, cited stats that impact on social media on young women are on par with binge drinking and massive spikes in suicide rates for young girls. “We have a real crisis on our hands here.”

“The toxicity that comes at you, yes, social media is an environment that has a lot of that,” added Markle.

The Duchess told the filled Austin Convention Center auditorium that “I keep my distance from it” when it comes to the negative social media that she’s been bombarded with. Markle said that she was barraged the most “when I was pregnant with Archie, Lily and the new born.” It baffled Markle how “catty and cruel” people can be.

“But we also created these habits — what I find to be the most distributing is how much of the hate are women spewing that to other women. I can’t make sense of that,” she continued.

“Reading something terrible about a woman, why are you sharing it with your friends?,” the Duchess continued, “That’s the piece that’s so lost right now.”

“We’ve forgotten about our humanity.”

Markle noted how the SXSW panel is being streamed on YouTube. “Everyone can hear the brilliance on this platform, but it also has hate and rhetoric. (The platform) incentivizes people to create pages to turn out comments and conspiracy theories that have a tremendous effect no mental health and safety.”

Markle said that “the systematic change has to come at the same time as the cultural change.” The Duchess said that while there’s a lot of female executives in power positions, they’re “allowing this behavior to run rampant. They have to put the ‘Dos’ behind the ‘Says.'”

The session today was presented by Markle’s The Archewell Foundation and The 19th, and the national nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Also appearing on the panel, that was moderated by 19th News’ Editor-at-Large Errin Haines, were Brooke Shields and Sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen.