Jonathan Haidt Explains Why Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Reached Out to Him

Eventually, she was hospitalized for bulimia and was close to death. Now, Katie is getting involved in public advocacy, explaining to adults exactly how apps that were supposed to connect her to her peers had isolated her instead. She said she was happy to join “amazing people like Jiore” to ensure that “we are doing our best to hold tech accountable.”

In her speech, Meghan noted that her early meetings with families like Katie’s taught her that she and Harry had a unique role to play in this work. “What we learned in these moments is that these parents…they didn’t just need therapy, they needed other parents who understood their very specific grief,” she said. “When they came together, they weren’t just sharing stories—they were creating a movement, and they did it quite well.”

After Haidt delivered a presentation covering both his research and the policy changes he has seen since The Anxious Generation was released in 2024, he joined Katie’s mother, parent advocate and wellness professional Kirsten Ryan, and Archewell peer support leader Amy Neville onstage. Katie Couric moderated their conversation.

After Meghan introduced him, Haidt joked that he was very impressed by the quality of talent that Project Healthy Minds had hired for the event. Following the discussion, Haidt told Vanity Fair that he met Meghan and Harry after Archewell reached out through his project After Babel. They finally connected at last year’s World Mental Health Day.

“I was greatly honored by that, but I then had to rush back to my class,” Haidt said. He apologized to his students, then explained that he was late by showing them a picture of him posing with Harry. “So the students cut me some slack.”

Since Haidt’s book became a global phenomenon, he’s only grown more firm in his conviction that smartphones are having a profound, negative impact on children. “What I said in the book was careful and full of footnotes and focused on the evidence that we have, which is pretty strong on mental health,” he said. The actual situation is “much worse than I said in the book because of the attentional destruction, which I only touched on briefly.”

Haidt added that he was glad to see Meghan and Harry’s work connecting parents in action. “I’m not that familiar with all of the things that Archewell does,” he said. “I just know that they have been bringing together the parents, helping the parents tell their story—helping them say that their child’s life matters.”