“Toxic.”

“Exposed.”

“Canceled.”

Such terms tend to float around social media on the daily, most revolving around who’s worthy of being the next “cancelled” online influencer. Fans, celebrities, companies and almost every other account on social media—all can and are affected by what is now known as cancel culture.

In 2019, cancel culture thrives as an ongoing fad within many social media platforms. “Canceling,” in essence, means to boycott or cease the support of someone or something due to a mistake they have made. A majority of the time, an old social media post surfaces with degrading or offensive messages, causing masses of online accounts to circulate the mistake throughout the internet, accompanied by one other word: cancelled.

The internet has built a certain intolerance to the targeting of groups based on gender identity, race, religion or sexual orientation; however, it still has a long way to go before it becomes perfect. As a woman of color, I strongly believe that all individuals spreading hate through derogatory and offensive means should not be supported. Countless others on social media share similar feelings, many jumping on the opportunity to spread the same idea.

However, despite the best intentions, cancel culture proves to be something very damaging to social media users. Not only are situations handled with seemingly nonexistent background research, but much of the time internet users disregard the possibility of personal growth from the person they’re canceling.

Online influencers have played a major role in this. Due to the popular trend of bringing personal conflicts to the public eye, they have heavily sensationalized the idea of attacking another person on public platforms. As a result, social media users have become too accustomed to melodramatic drama. It’s no surprise that many turn to the extreme when another person on social media does something wrong.

Often, the mistakes people are cancelled for were made a significant amount of time in the past. Despite this passage of time, the internet is quick to judge individuals on trivial matters on an extremely surface level without a complete understanding of the situation. Apologies and evidence of growth are too often pushed aside throughout these internet ordeals. With this comes an underlying sense of entitlement from those who continue to deny the possibility of growth and change from another person. And this is truly the most damaging aspect of cancel culture.

Cancel culture continues to undermine the greatest part about people—growth.