The guests dug the Prosecco and hit away while the dessert is served in the third annual Project Health Minds Gala On Thursday night in New York.
In the evening it was over, but there was still a big prize to give: Humanitarian year, which this year would honor Prince Harry and Megan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, for the creation of the Parents Network through their non -profit Foundation. The Parent Network supports families who have been damaged by social media.
Earlier this year, it hosted an event where young children were presented on giant smartphone screens. The children had lost their lives in ways that their parents believe that social media had contributed.
Thursday’s Gala was hosted by the non -profit project Healthy Minds, which provides free access to mental health services, especially focusing on young people who are struggling in a technology -dominated world. The event and the conference the next day showed how young people and their parents view social media and revealed the serious impact these platforms had on mental health.
“Let me share a number with you,” Prince Harry said, as he and his wife took the scene to accept the prize. “Four thousand, how many families do the Center for Legal Victims of Social Media represent.”
This number only represents parents who have managed to link their child’s damage to social media and have the ability to “resist some of the richest, most powerful companies in the world,” Prince Harry said.
“We have watched the explosion of unjust artificial intelligence. We have heard more and more stories from crushed families and watched parents around the world worry about the digital life of their children,” he continued.
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He said these families were against companies and interest groups that spend millions to suppress the truth. These algorithms were designed to “maximize data collection at any cost” and stated that social media were running to children.
He then called on Apple for privacy violations and META to say that privacy restrictions will cost them billions. He talked about the AI ​​damage and what happened when the researchers, who put in place as children, examined an increasingly popular AI Chatbot. “They lived a harmful interaction every five minutes,” he said.
“This was not satisfied with a third party,” he continued. “These were the chatbots of the company that worked to promote their own destructive internal policies.”
The big announcement of the night was that the parent network would work with Parenstogether, another organization focused on family defense and internet security to do more work that protects children from social media.
This is not the first time that Prince Harry, in particular, has talked about social media damage. In April, the prince visited youth leaders in Brooklyn to talk to them about the growing influence of technological platforms, which are motivated by profit rather than security. In January, he and Meghan also called Meta to undermine freedom of speech, after the platform announced that it would make changes to the policy of controlling events.
The couple’s thoughts on the influence of technology companies do not exist individually.
Many studies have shown the negative effects of social media on young people, creating a mental health crisis and fueling an epidemic of loneliness. The next day, Friday, World Mental Health Day, Project Healthy Minds THREW A FESTIVAL TALK for mental health. For some of these panels, Project Health’s minds worked with Prince Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation to have discussions with parents, supporters and experts on how social media have been rewritten and rewritten.
Following Gala was a mental health festival
The first table is simply called “how do young people do in the digital age” was introduced by Harry.
One, however, Katie talked about how when she was only 12 years old, Tiktok will fill her for you with a video about diet and weight loss. Katie eventually developed an eating disorder.
Another panel was Isabel Sunderland, the policy that leads to the organization that plans it for us, which is pushing for safer social media.
He remembers a day coming in an article on Meta Genocide, in which Meta platform, Facebook, He was later accused of contributing. The article led her under a rabbit hole as she tried to understand how the platforms she uses every day could be used as tools that cause “hatred and violence”. She always thought it was her mistake that she was facing content on harmful issues such as eating disorders.
“What I came to find through this research is that in fact, it is designed by social media companies to increase the addiction and time spent on their platforms,” ​​he said.
The next group, focusing on childhood, further talked about the damage caused by the social media. He was introduced by Meghan and coordinated by journalist Katie Couric.
Started with Jonathan Haidt, the author of the book with the best sales and controversial book“The restless generation”, which presented his findings.
Stress is up. Depression is up. Children are fighting at school. More children find their lives so as not to make sense. There is no longer out of play time. They do not learn social indications because they do not go out. Boys are driven down the trail for gambling addictions. Young people do not know how to handle conflicts in real life because they do not spend time in real life – only online.
And while the states are trying to pass legislation, it was not without a race – the technology lobby is working hard.
“The game is for brain development,” Haidt told Couric in the team. “When animals are deprived of the game in early childhood, they come out much more anxious in adulthood.”
There is even a decrease in the right boredom time – those moments that spend looking out the window during a car ride or look unnecessarily while waiting in a tail. These moments have given the brain time to rest and have now been replaced by rolling on tablets and smartphones.
Amy Neville, director of the Parent Network Community and President of the Alexander Neville Foundation, joined the group. Lost her son, Alexander, in overdose and sued Snapchat to provide access to drug representatives to her son.
“I quickly realized that families in all the United States woke up, finding their children dead in their bedrooms from the pills purchased by Snapchat,” he said. Her treatment is moving forward. “I feel it is a struggle to death,” he said. “I’m willing to go there.”
Another mother, Kirsten, took the stage. She is the mother of young girl Katie, who sat in the previous group. She talked about how she thought she did everything right – checking her daughter’s phone every night and put it away before bedtime. Katie still ended up in the hospital, however, with a food disorder.
Kirsten passed the text messages and the search history. Someone then sent her an article on how Tiktok appears Content of young girls disorder.
“My husband and I did not know about the page for you,” he said. “This was not satisfied that my daughter was looking for, but rather satisfied that he is coming to her repetition.”
The consensus of this table – as with both events – was more action.
Throughout the event, people have called for more legislative action, more accountability than technological platforms, more speech and more people who make up to set boundaries between them and social media. Although the damage is said to fill the presence, hope remains around the corner.
“We can and will build the movement that all families and all children deserve,” Meghan told Gala. “We know that when parents come together, when communities unite, waves become.
