The Prince of Wales has revealed that his 12-year-old son, Prince George, not owning a mobile phone has "become a little bit of a tense issue" within the family.
William candidly discussed how he and his wife, Kate, navigate challenges with their children, including the decision to withhold smartphones from George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis.
Speaking to broadcaster Luciano Huck in Brazil, where he travelled for the Earthshot Prize in Rio de Janeiro, the royal elaborated on the couple’s joint decision regarding their children’s access to technology.
“It’s really hard,” he said in a video shared to Mr Huck’s 23 million Instagram followers on Monday.
“Our children don’t have phones. I think when George moves on to secondary school, then maybe he might have a phone that has no internet access.
“And to be honest, it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming a little bit of a tense issue.
“But I think he understands why, we communicate why we don’t think it’s right. And again, I think it’s the internet access I have a problem with.
“I think children can access too much stuff they don’t need to see online, and so having a phone and text message, the old sort of brick phone as they call them, I think that’s fine.”
He also revealed that he and the Princess of Wales share the school run, and he attends sports days, matches and plays in the garden with his children when he can.
“I’m the taxi driver, Luciano,” he joked.
“Taxi driver, sports days, matches, playing in the garden, where I can.
“School run, most days. I mean, Catherine and I share it. She probably does the bulk of it.”
Mr Huck, who hosted William’s Earthshot Prize on Wednesday, and the Prince of Wales spoke from a cable car with Brazil’s Sugarloaf mountains visible in the background.
He asked William about the challenges of the past few years for his family, particularly with his father, the King, and his wife both being diagnosed with cancer.
“Every family has its own difficulties and its own challenges and I think it’s very individual and sort of moment-dependent as to how you deal with those problems,” the Prince of Wales said.
“We choose to communicate a lot more with our children. Now that has good things and bad things. Sometimes you feel you’re oversharing with the children. You probably shouldn’t, but most of the time, hiding stuff from them doesn’t work.
“There are no answers, but it’s always a balancing act to me that every parent knows that it’s kind of: ‘How much do I say? What do I say? When do I say?’
“And you know, there’s no manual for being a parent. You’ve just got to go with a bit of instinct.”
It comes as Rio’s city council president, Carlo Caiado, announced on Monday that William will be made an honorary citizen of Rio De Janeiro, known as a carioca.
“Prince William truly deserves to become an honorary carioca,” Mr Caiado said in a translated statement.
“His recent visit to our city was remarkable and already missed by many. He has shown genuine commitment to humanitarian and environmental causes, as we can see during the COP30 in Belem.
“He deserves all the recognition. The mayor said the prince should become a carioca and we embraced the idea.”
Asked by Mr Huck what kind of world he would like to leave for Prince George when he becomes king, William said: “I care a lot about the environment and the world that the next generation are going to inherit, because all the social issues we want to deal with will start from actually our natural world.
“And so if we don’t get that right, there’s no chance of us being able to feed the world, be able to look after the world, be able to build houses for the world, have space to grow crops, all this sort of stuff.
“It’s all intertwined. And so the world I want to pass on to my children is one that I would love to inherit when I was a child.
“And I think we all want to do that is give, give the world in a better place than when we inherited it.”
