Meghan Markle Turns Off Instagram Comments — and Here’s Why It Matters

When Meghan Markle returned to Instagram to kick off 2025, many were quick to notice that she had disabled the comments on her account.

On Jan. 1, Meghan, 43, made a much-anticipated return to the social media platform, posting a video of herself on the beach, writing “2025” in the sand. The video was shot by her husband, Prince Harry, on a public beach in Montecito, California, where the couple lives with their children Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3. The next day, Meghan used the platform to share a trailer of her forthcoming Netflix show With Love, Meghan, which debuts on the streaming service on Jan. 15.

Her Instagram return marks the first time Meghan has been autonomously on social media since she shut her personal Instagram account down in January 2018 ahead of her royal wedding to Harry that May. Though she and Harry, 40, were represented on two royal social media accounts — @KensingtonRoyal, an account they shared with Prince William and Kate Middleton, and @SussexRoyal, their account that they stepped away from in March 2020 — and Meghan’s lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard, has its own Instagram page, it will be the first time in seven years since Meghan has run her own social media. And she is looking to protect her peace in doing so.

Related: Inside Meghan Markle’s Complicated Relationship with Social Media as She Makes Surprise Return to Instagram

During an October 2020 appearance on the Teenager Therapy podcast, Meghan spoke about being the “most trolled person in the entire world” the year prior.

“I don’t care if you’re 15 or you’re 25, if people are saying things about you that aren’t true, what that does to your mental and emotional health is so damaging,” she said, adding later in the episode “we all know what it feels like to have our feelings hurt.”

Related: Meghan Markle Addresses Being the 'Most Trolled Person in the Entire World': 'Almost Unsurvivable'

In an episode of the 2022 Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, Meghan opened up through tears about how threats against her on social media affected her life: “I think for people to really understand, you know, when you plant a seed that is so hateful, what it can grow into,” she said.

“Just a couple of days ago, I was going through the manual for our security team at home, and on one of the pages that I happened to flip to, it was about online monitoring,” she added. “And they're like, ‘If you see a tweet like this, please report it to the head of security immediately.’ And it just said: ‘Meghan just needs to die. Someone needs to kill her. Maybe it should be me.’ ”

“And I was just like, ‘Okay.’ That's, like, what's actually out in the world because of people creating hate,” she continued. “I'm a mom. That's my real life. And that's the piece when you see it and you go, 'You are making people want to kill me. It's not just a tabloid. It's not just some story. You are making me scared.' Right?”

“That night, to be up and down in the middle of the night, looking down my hallway, like, ‘Are we safe? Are the doors locked? Is security on?’ Is every — that's real. ‘Are my babies safe?’ And you've created it for what? Because you're bored or because it sells your papers or it makes you feel better about your own life? It's real what you're doing. And that's the piece I don't think people fully understand.”

In 2021, Twitter analytics service Bot Sentinel found that Harry and Meghan were targeted by a “brazenly coordinated” harassment campaign on the platform and that a “hate network” of just 83 accounts was responsible for 70% of the harassment aimed at them. The campaign included “racist-coded language” and had a unique potential reach of 17 million users.

Speaking at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women virtual summit the year prior, Meghan spoke about what it would take to create humane tech, saying, “It’s like we live in the future when you’re talking about bots and trolls and all of these things. It seems so fantastical, but that’s actually the current state of affairs and that is shaping how we interact with each other online and off — and that’s the piece that’s important. It is not just an isolated experience. It transcends into how you interact with anyone around you, and certainly your own relationship with yourself.”

She added of misinformation about her specifically, “If you look back at anything I’ve said, what ends up being inflammatory is people’s interpretation of it. But if you listen to what I actually say, it’s not controversial.”

“When you look at what these platforms are capable of with that reach, and what that propels in terms of trolling … You can either train people to be cruel, or you can train people to be kind. It’s really that simple,” Meghan continued.

During a visit to Colombia with Harry in August, Meghan said that she was calling this next stage of her life her “chapter of joy” — and turning the comments off is likely a factor in that aim.

“My intentionality is to enjoy this chapter and to be able to move through every piece of that as best as I can,” Meghan said while in the South American country.

In rejoining Instagram, it gives Meghan the ability to connect and share with her followers — but not allowing comments serves as a buffer against negativity. After several years away from social media, a source says Meghan is “excited” to make her Instagram comeback, where she plans to spread "joy" and share updates on her latest projects.

One of the cornerstones of Harry and Meghan’s work with their nonprofit The Archewell Foundation is creating a safer digital world, and Meghan told Jane Pauley for an episode of CBS Sunday Morning in August, “So as we can see what's happening in the online space, we know that there's a lot of work to be done there, and we're just happy to be able to be a part of change for good.”

One change Meghan has expressed she’d like to make on social media is adding a “dislike” button to platforms, as she explained in November 2021 at The New York Times DealBook Online Summit: “One of the things that seems like such an easy solve from my lens, if you look at Instagram for example, there’s a ‘like’ button and then there’s comments,” she said. “So if you disagree with something, you have to comment on it in a really vitriolic way. If there was a ‘dislike’ button, wouldn’t that hugely shift what you were putting out there? Because you could just ‘like’ it or ‘dislike’ it.”

“Now you have to ‘like’ it or say something negative,” she continued. “It is just adding to this really unfortunate cycle that I think is having an unfortunate effect on women across the world.”

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This past March, while speaking at the SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas, Meghan added of comments on social media that “very, very inciting comments and conspiracy theories” are capable of having “a tremendously negative effect on someone’s mental health, on their physical safety” — so it’s perhaps no surprise that comments are disabled on the @meghan account as it debuted, amassing 1 million followers in just 24 hours of its existence.

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