podcast conversation with comedian Hasan Minhaj earlier this year<\/a>, Harry heatedly described social media platforms as being run by \u201cevil, wicked people\u201d who \u201cfarm our children\u2019s mindset and market it for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\nLast year, Harry and Meghan jointly unveiled the Lost Screen Memorial, an installation of around 50 smartphone-shaped lightboxes, each showing the lock-screen image of a child whose death their families believe was linked to social media. It was one of the most visually striking campaigns of their post-royal careers, and a deeply affecting event. <\/p>\n
The memorial, created through their now-shuttered Archewell Foundation, was explicitly framed as a call for stronger online safety laws and a rebuke to tech companies that, in Harry\u2019s view, have left parents carrying an impossible burden.<\/p>\n
![\"Bereaved](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/QR2HWWYFZZFD7KAJVWUNNTJZLQ.jpg\")
Bereaved parents view images of their deceased children displayed at the \u201cLost Screen Memorial,\u201d an art installation of large-scale smartphones featuring 50 children who lost their lives due to online harm. Frederic J. Brown\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n
So Harry has placed himself firmly and emotionally on the side of families who believe Instagram helped kill their children.<\/p>\n
If that is the case, why on Earth is Meghan leaning harder than ever into that same platform as the engine of her business, family, and personal brand?<\/p>\n
Meghan\u2019s entire commercial ecosystem is now funneling sales, heavily promoted via Instagram, through both the dedicated @aseverofficial account and her personal @meghan page.<\/p>\n
Meghan is one of Instagram\u2019s brightest stars. Her products, her television show, and even her charitable projects are being marketed in large part through a platform her husband clearly loathes and despises.<\/p>\n
![\"Meghan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/AZ3QPFXFBFHXVDXOM4CW632MHU.jpg\")
Meghan Markle, Payman Bahmani Bailey and Heather Dorak on \u201cWith Love, Meghan.\u201d Meghan Markle may not like social media, but they are vital in promoting her business interests. Netflix <\/p>\n
That tension has not gone unnoticed.<\/p>\n
This week, The Royalist asked sources close to Meghan whether the couple saw any contradiction between Harry\u2019s campaigning and Meghan\u2019s online activity. A spokesperson argued that there was no conflict, noting that advocating for safer, better-regulated social media is perfectly compatible with sharing carefully selected, controlled images of one\u2019s children. The line from their camp has long been that privacy is about choice and control rather than total absence.<\/p>\n
But if they are now publishing non-anonymized, full-face photographs of the children directly onto Instagram, that is a clear departure from where we have been so far. <\/p>\n
Many other high-profile actors, musicians, and public figures choose not to post their children\u2019s faces online, even while running large commercial operations; their children simply don\u2019t appear. But then, they are not trying to sell a perfect family as a product.<\/p>\n
![\"Meghan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/EOFNA6SXMZHBTDK75JJ7FTMZNU.jpg\")
Meghan and Harry have used Instagram to promote their family life in the past, while being careful to obscure their children\u2019s faces. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex\/Meghan, Duchess of Sussex <\/p>\n
Harry and Meghan have, intentionally or not, turned Archie and Lilibet into the most famous and recognizable children in the world. Owing to Meghan\u2019s own branded content, these two small children are now woven into the Sussex myth-making machine. Today\u2019s Lilibet Valentine\u2019s Day image makes that more explicit than ever.<\/p>\n
It also widens what already feels like a yawning gap between Harry and Meghan\u2019s stances on social media.<\/p>\n
Complicating matters, Meghan has previously suggested that she seldom uses social media. In earlier interviews, she spoke of avoiding platforms for her \u201cown self-preservation\u201d and compared social media to an addiction she didn\u2019t want to feed.<\/p>\n
Harry, however, has repeatedly acknowledged that he still consumes online content and is acutely aware of what is said about them. In a recent Harper\u2019s Bazaar profile, Meghan even drew a distinction between the \u201cmedia\u201d she consumes and the \u201cdifferent media\u201d her husband reads\u2014widely interpreted as a nod to his continued exposure to social networks and online commentary. <\/p>\n
So here we are. No one can pretend to be astonished that Meghan is now putting her children\u2019s faces on Instagram and that those pictures will drive clicks and, ultimately, business. We have been heading in this direction for a long time.<\/p>\n
But it does feel cynical, perhaps using the latest Andrew scandal for cover, and it will make it much harder for the couple to sustain the argument that everyone else has been invading their privacy while they themselves have simply sought to protect it.<\/p>\n
If you truly believed a system was that irredeemably harmful, you might reasonably expect to step back from using it as the cornerstone of your business and family branding. Meghan\u2019s actions are likely to fuel rumors of strain and disagreement between the couple over the appropriate level of privacy for their family.<\/p>\n
Lilibet\u2019s picture highlights a gap between her parents\u2019 rhetoric on the harms of social media and the way they now use those platforms\u2014a gap that critics will be only too happy to exploit, and that will be increasingly hard for the Sussexes to explain away.<\/p>\n
Want more royal gossip, scoops and scandal? Click through to follow all Tom Sykes\u2019 reporting at The Royalist<\/a> on Substack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, last night published the clearest photograph yet of her daughter Princess Lilibet\u2019s face on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,178570,9843,9844,42412],"class_list":["post-470535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-lilibet-diana-mountbatten-windsor","tag-meghan-markle","tag-prince-harry","tag-royalist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"LONDON,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/2E3S3GDHTJBVHDKXHBW5ZP3474.jpg\")
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, leaves the High Court in London after the fourth day of the trial in a privacy case against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the publisher of the Daily Mail, over unlawful information gathering, Jan. 22, 2026. Wiktor Szymanowicz\/Future Publishing via Getty Images <\/p>\n