Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepped down from their roles last year as senior members of the British royal family. With the new year in, its seems that the pair may be stepping away from social media for the long-run. Since March of 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan’s Instagram account, @sussexroyal, has been inactive, and choosing to no longer be royals, meant also choosing to no longer use the account, and to forgo their 10 million plus followers.
A source close to the previous Duke and Duchess of Sussex has recently confirmed that its “very unlikely” that they would be returning to the Instagram account, or to any personal social media accounts, and any linked to their philanthropic organization, the “Archewell Foundation.” According to the royal source, it seems as though the infamous couple not wanting to use social media any longer boils down to the negativity they have attracted online.
The Sussex Royal Instagram account had been an important window into the lives of Prince Harry and Meghan and their royal activities, however, the pair have been extremely outspoken about their disdain for social media. Last October, in an interview with Fortune, she said that the main reason for her reluctance to continue to use social media was “self-preservation.”
“For my own self-preservation, I have not been on social media for a very long time,” said Meghan. “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.”
Moreover, the ex-royal talked about the online trolling she has faced in her time on social media platforms and referred to it as “almost unsurvivable.” When she appeared on the Teenager Therapy podcast, Meghan Markle talked about the bullying she had experienced, stating “In 2019, I was the most trolled person in the entire world – male or female. 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. 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.”