King Charles is right to add shouty social media to his royal hit list

King Charles III doesn’t actually namecheck Facebook, Twitter/X or TikTok when he urges us to turn down the volume on public debate writes Sean O’Grady – but we all know what he’s (quietly) talking about...

An ancient institution dating back a thousand years can still have a role, and, one year on from his accession, the King seems to understand this (Getty)

The King is a worried man. That’s no great surprise. He often gives the impression of being a troubled, even tortured soul, anxious about the state of the planet (rightly), the state of the nation (ditto) and his own constitutional position (probably a shrewd instinct in his line of work).

He cannot be alone. The last few years of his mother’s reign were obviously tumultuous ones, where the very fabric of parliamentary democracy was stretched to breaking point. As we’ve seen in recent days, too, there are other divisions, albeit driven by causes and passions far away. All of our arguments – the normal ones and the extraordinary – have been amplified and exacerbated by social media, channels that have a unique ability to provoke rage in the otherwise mild-mannered (not to mention the bots).