Cancelling Teens and the Editor and Chief of Teen Vogue: A Slippery Slope
As a Child Psychiatrist, I understand how tough it is to figure out who you are and what you stand for. It is easy to get caught up in a bullying incident as a victim or as a perpetrator when you are young. With maturity comes a more balanced mind, and some of the greatest learning a teen can have often happened from mistakes.
I talked about “cancel culture” in an article in The Purist recently, defining it as “group shaming to humiliate someone in person and on social media publicly. Hindsight is a gift, and using it to shame others is perpetuating the idea that other people deserve your hate.”
There is a difference between taking accountability for one’s actions and canceling someone altogether. And even further, punishment and cruelty once someone has acknowledged and taken accountability for their actions, yet continues to be punished. So, what if your mistakes are never forgotten, and they haunt you like a ghost for all of your careers? How are we to move on as a society and culture if we can’t forgive people for their mistakes?
I am sorry to learn that Alexi McCammond resigned in her position at Teen Vogue over racist tweets she retracted years back and had already apologized for. This was made even tenser by the fact there have been racially motivated killings against Asian Americans. Ms. McCammond was 17 years old when she made those original statements: the height of teenage year stupidity and risk-taking behavior.
We are hard-wired to do stupid things when we are teenagers. Any parent that has raised a teenager knows this. Teenagers often make bad decisions, are inherently selfish, and lack sensitivity to other people’s feelings. In other words, they can be reckless, rash, and narcissistic in this development phase. I have seen many teens in my practice suffer from horrible depression and self-esteem crises after being canceled for something they did or said on social media, even after apologizing.
“Risk-taking declines between adolescence and adulthood because of changes in the brain’s cognitive control system — changes which improve individuals’ capacity for self-regulation. The differing timetables of these changes make mid-adolescence a time of heightened vulnerability to risky and reckless behavior.”
With all of that in mind, can we hold adults accountable for the things they did as teenagers? Back in the day, cancelable offenses were never recorded, so they can’t resurface today. Gosh knows I would have been canceled, and so would most of the people I know. Now, everything is recorded, and there is no margin for error. The stakes are so high for teens…and at what cost?
I often talk to parents about why social media can be problematic and cause harm to teens. This is all the more reason that you need to stay on top of their social media and educate them about cultural sensitivity as a parent. That needs to be prioritized as we need to anticipate the future. We all hope we can build and exist within a culture where we can be forgiven for mistakes.
This does not forgive the offense by any means or make excuses for what she said, but Ms. McCammond seems to have learned her lesson. She writes, “I became a journalist to help lift the stories and voices of our most vulnerable communities. As a young woman of color, that’s part of the reason I was so excited to lead the Teen Vogue team in its next chapter.” She has proved that she learned her lesson with her prior apology as well as her actions. So, how are these tweets the equivalent of a scarlet letter?
It is important to point out that hateful and hurtful comments do have harmful and negative impacts on our society. Some studies show the connection between crime rates and hate speech on social media. And in light of the recent hate crimes against AAPI communities, we have to acknowledge its implications on our society.
The opinion on CNN by Amra Walker quotes, “Alexi McCammond, Teen Vogue’s new Editor-in-Chief, may not realize these decade-old tweets conjure up profound feelings of marginalization that many of us Asians and Asian Americans feel in our gut each time a stranger mockingly pulls the ends of their eyes up at us or hurl racist or xenophobic slurs.”
I think Alexi McCammond does realize it, hence the apology. And “he who has never sinned should throw the first stone.” Everyone who was offended by the comments she made as a teenager has a right to take offense to the comments, but this was the old Alexi, the teenage Alexi. This is not who she is today, who has been a role model to many, and whose current social media looks like a United Nations advertisement.
This should be balanced by understanding that people make mistakes — especially as teenagers — and we all need to reflect on the times where we have made mistakes to allow her space to move forward.
We all agree racially motivated slurs are never acceptable. Ms. McCammond has proven herself to be a very responsible adult, and we can look past her teenage mistakes and accept her apology. Due to her mistake and the mistakes of us all, it has allowed us to grow as a person and as a culture, and we should allow people to move on.
No parent would want their children to be held accountable for everything they did in their teen years. We all need to be allowed to learn from our mistakes, not just be indefinitely canceled.
