Get off social media and embrace life, Kate tells pupils (with the help of a family snap)
THE Duchess of Cambridge yesterday encouraged young people to switch off from the online world and focus on their true talents.
Visiting a school, she hailed a budding artist as a ‘fantastic advert’ for what young people can do. Shown the work of A-level student Shaquille, 16, she said: ‘Wow, this is what you can do when you’re not on social media!’
Kate was at Alperton Community School in north London to mark Children’s Mental Health Week. At another school earlier she produced a photo of her family for a Year 2 ‘show and tell’.
Asked to show ‘something that makes you happy’, she opened her black clutch bag and teased: ‘I’ve got something. It’s not very big. Do you want to see it?’
Kate, in a £2,100 green Eponine dress with LK Bennett boots, continued: ‘This is a photograph of my family. These are my children and this is my husband.
‘My family makes me feel happy. We like playing outside together and spending lots of time together... and that makes me feel very happy.’
The photo is the one the couple sent out on their Christmas cards last month. The duchess was at Lavender Primary School in Enfield, North London, as patron of the children’s mental health charity Place2Be and she also joined a class discussing the benefits of food as part of physical and mental wellbeing. Matthew Kleiner-Mann of the the Ivy Learning Trust said: ‘She was so wonderful with the children.’