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The Duke of Sussex has welcomed two landmark lawsuits against major tech companies, declaring: “Finally, some truth and accountability has arrived.”

In a speech in Washington DC to the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) global summit on privacy, AI governance and cybersecurity law, Prince Harry said he had done a “deep dive into the tech-fuelled world in which my children – all our children – are growing up in”.

He spoke of “harrowing stories” of how time spent on the big tech companies’ platforms had led to “grave and irreversible harm”.

Referring to the two cases last week, which saw a New Mexico jury order Meta to pay $375m in civil penalties and a Los Angeles jury order Meta and YouTube to pay $6m damages to a 20-year-old woman, Harry said: “About bloody time!”

He added: “A jury confirmed what parents have felt and experts have said all along – the systems driving our social media platforms have been built to exploit, not protect. And the people at the heart of it have always known it.”

The Sussexes’ foundation launched the Parents’ Network a few years ago to support families whose children have been affected by social media. Harry said he and the Duchess of Sussex “had the opportunity to spend time with many of the parents in the Los Angeles case as it proceeded in the courtroom each day”.

He added the “current model of technology” was “failing to support progress” and “setting it back” for communities around the globe.

He described “seeing constant headlines about state-sponsored surveillance” and privacy breaches, and outlined how he came to see his own privacy issue as “just one small example”.

“Simultaneously, I am seeing constant headlines about state-sponsored surveillance, doxing of election workers and civil rights activists, and massive privacy breaches featuring social security numbers and sensitive health information.”

He also raised questions about how privacy will be protected in the future, saying: “Should a parent have to worry about their child’s data being sold to a predator? Should a person’s voice or face or innermost thoughts be irrefutably their own? Should a young girl have to worry that the man across the room is secretly recording and undressing her using AI through the lens of a pair of smartglasses?”

Speaking of his own privacy, he said he had experienced a lack of it “from birth”. He told the audience he had spent the past seven years in litigation against three media organisations in the UK.

Harry and other household names, including Lady Doreen Lawrence and Sir Elton John, are waiting to hear whether they have won their high court cases against the Daily Mail’s publisher Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) for unlawful information-gathering, which ANL strongly denies.

Harry was previously awarded £140,600 in damages by a judge from Mirror Group Newspapers in 2023 for unlawful information-gathering and settled a claim against News Group Newspapers in 2025, receiving substantial damages and a “full and unequivocal apology” for “serious intrusion” into his private life and “unlawful activities” by The Sun.

He had “nothing to gain from taking on powerful institutions,” he said, adding it had come “at a personal and reputational cost for me, my wife and our children”.

“But is it worth it? Absolutely. Because this is about more than one individual – it is about the systems that shape and influence all of our lives.”