'Being a royal killed my mum... I told myself I don’t want this job,' says Harry in frank speech during Australia visit
Harry told a crowd that after the death of Princess Diana he told himself 'I don't want this job' even from a young age
Prince Harry has described how being a working royal ‘killed his mum’ and said that he never wanted the job in some of his most candid remarks since stepping away from royal life.
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The Duke of Sussex made the frank admission to former politician Brendan Nelson after giving a speech to business leaders.
He said: “After my mum died just before my 13th birthday – I was like: 'I don’t want this job. I don’t want this role – wherever this is headed, I don’t like it.
“It killed my mum, and I was very much against it, and I stuck my head in the sand for years and years.
“Eventually I realised – well, hang on, if there was somebody else in this position, how would they be making the most of this platform and this ability and the resources that come with it to make a difference in the world?
“And also, what would my mum want me to do? And that really changed my own perspective.”
He told the crowd that he had felt 'lost, betrayed, or completely powerless' at points in his life.
He also spoke out about the dangers of social media and how firms are targeting young people, and at the same time failing to properly protect them.
Read more: Meghan tells Australian students she was ‘most trolled person’ in the world
“Nowhere is that more visible than in the digital world because many of the systems shaping our reality, our attention, our self-worth and our relationships were not built around human wellbeig,” he said.
“Too many of these platforms are not designed with safety in mind... And we know these companies have the capability to understand who their users are.
“They can target young people with extraordinary precision … but when it comes to protecting those same young people, we are told that it’s too difficult, too complex, it can’t be done.
“That contradiction should concern all of us because if a platform is capable of targeting a child, it is surely capable of protecting them, and if it is not doing so, that is not a failure of technology. It is a failure of responsibility.”
Harry also said Australia’s ban on under-16s using social media was “epic” from a “responsibility and leadership standpoint”.
Harry made the remarks at the InterEdge Summit in Melbourne on “leadership, psychosocial safety and human connection in the workplace”, with the Duchess of Sussex watching on in the audience on Thursday.
Delegate tickets for the summit were available for £525, with platinum tickets costing £1,250 and a virtual ticket allowing on-demand access to Harry’s speech costing £260.
Meghan, 41, also gave an honest speech about how she has been bullied online for a decade.
During a discussion about social media and mental health at the wellbeing program Baytr, she said: “Every day for 10 years, I have been bullied and attacked. And I was the most trolled person in the entire world.”
She said technology companies are 'not incentivised to stop' bullying and harassment online.
“I can speak to that really personally, which is why I like to listen because it rings true for me in a very real way,” she said.
She added: “When I think of all of you and what you’re experiencing, I think so much of that is having to realise that you know that industry, that billion-dollar industry, that is completely anchored and predicated on cruelty to get clicks – that’s not going to change.
Batyr is a preventative youth mental health organisation, which delivers peer-to-peer programmes in schools, universities and workplaces and “uses lived experience storytelling to spark conversations around mental health”.
It is hosting a two-day workshop in Melbourne to address the challenges faced by rural and remote young people, “being left behind by a crisis-driven mental health system”.
Batyr was founded in 2011 by Sebastian Robertson, who decided to share his experience of mental ill-health to “normalise conversations and provide hope to young people going through tough times”.
The organisation, named after an elephant in a Kazakhstan zoo which was claimed to be able to use more than 20 human phrases, works to address a “youth mental health crisis in Australia”.