“Cancel Culture” is a popular phrase now on the internet. As defined by the Urban dictionary, it is the desire and act of canceling out, shaming or boycotting a person or a community from social media platforms. This culture can range from coming up with cancel hashtags to exposure of personal photos, conversations, and other things that can be a cause for someone to be online shamed.

Based on what I am seeing, a lot of this canceling out takes place on Twitter and Facebook. Some of my friends are very vocal with issues like this while some think that it is too much. I see cancel culture as a band-aid solution to issues that we need to resolve maturely. At times, it can even worsen the situation.

Here are some reasons why we need to cancel the cancel culture:

1. Everyone makes mistakes. Some are just magnified by social media.
We all commit mistakes in life and some of them are unintentional. It may sound cliche but nobody is perfect. A single mistake can kindle an uproar on social media that might result in a string of false and worse stories. Social media also has this ability to magnify small misunderstandings that could have been resolved early on, personally.

2. We should give everyone the chance to learn and improve from their mistakes.
There are things in life that we have to learn the hard way. And while some of us are busy pointing out the lapses of a person, we should also allow them to work on themselves and be better the next time they post or interact in social media.

3. What we see on social media is not “everything”.
What we see in social media is not enough for us to completely disvalue someone because that does not spell out the entirety of a person. The reality is that social media allows us to see what we only want to see. We have to be more understanding and open-minded because social media is not everything.

4. Cancel culture can affect someone’s mental health.
I know a lot of you may say that this is just a getaway for some to play the role of the victim, but, a greater portion of the “cancel culture” subjects are affected negatively especially their mental state. Most of them are now labeled as toxic people and the chance for them to take better steps is limited which can lead to self-doubt and other mental health-related problems

5. Cancel culture recruits hate, instead of education.
The goal of many with cancel culture is to call out “bad” acts on social media. The bad thing here is that many of us resort to attacking someone personally, exposing private conversations, and revealing pasts which results in a massive amount of hate. Instead, our goal should be educating people constructively and letting them know how much they can still improve on.

6. Seeking for someone you cancel out can affect your social media outlook.
Social media is a double-faced platform. If you constantly look for issues and controversies just to cancel out someone, this may affect how you look at life. This inculcates a mindset that focuses on what could go wrong instead of what could go right.

7. If educating someone won’t work, feel free to mute, block, or unfollow them.
You and your social media deserve the peace of mind. If you’ve already tried your best to reach out and put things on perspective for someone and they continue despite their mistakes, the best option will be muting, blocking or unfollowing them.

The immense power we allow social media to use can be constructive and devastating at the same time. However, we need to remind ourselves that what we see on the screen is completely different from reality. And that is the main reason why we should be extra careful and critical with the personalities we follow and cancel.