Cancel culture controversy continues to emerge among internet users in America, especially teenagers, as a closer look into how social media works to forget people who have done wrong.

“Canceling” has been woven into the social media seen today, acting as one of the driving forces behind the clicks and likes that are amassed across various platforms. Affecting teenagers and adults alike, cancel culture has become a controversial phenomenon that touches the people doing the “canceling”, the person who is being “canceled” and everyday people of the internet like Bridgeland’s staff and students, including Rodriguez-Bell.

“Cancel culture is very trendy right now,” Rodriguez-Bell said. “It’s also just about throwing something away. Whether it’s a person and you want to throw them away, get rid of them, or a thought or a practice that you want to get rid of.”

Cancel culture can be viewed from many different perspectives, and studies show that half of all Americans know about cancel culture and have different views about its effects. It is also debated if cancel culture is a new form of shunning and/or public shaming and if it is even continuing to evolve on the internet today, according to senior Amanda Crowninshield.

“I think cancel culture emerged when the public started to realize how much of an influence celebrities had on the internet,” Crowninshield said. “Especially when everybody has access to it. I do think that it becomes a form of public shaming when it becomes extreme and people purposefully hurt the person instead of teaching them right from wrong.”

One of the largest psychological phenomena behind cancel culture, explained by psychology teacher Laura Nguyen, is deindividuation or the loss of personal opinion to the point of view of a larger group of people.

“I think in general we know that our society is based on free speech, but when it comes down to it, we’re going to go with the flow,” Nguyen said. “This is a process called deindividuation where you lose your own sense of identity to the identity of the group. That’s what allows people to not feel guilty for canceling people or to feel self-righteous because they feel they are working to achieve what’s best for the group.”

This loss of identity to the philosophy of the group is also believed to be combined with the anonymity of the internet, creating an environment where this sensation can freely take place and give a place for people to be able to cancel each other.

“I think with the rise of social media, we still haven’t gotten used to the idea that if we’re not in front of a person, we’re going to say things that are a lot more extreme,” Nguyen said. “Nobody’s going to say something horrible to Mike Tyson’s face, but they will online.”

With the analysis of the effects of these behaviors on cancel culture as well as its ambiguity, there is a large debate on whether or not canceling people is morally correct or incorrect. People also believe that “canceling” started off with the right mindset, yet became more hateful as the crowd became more aggressive.

“Personally, I think cancel culture had its initial intentions right,” Crowninshield said. “As it began to grow, and people canceling celebrities got more and more violent, the whole purpose of the movement fell. I agree that bad people don’t deserve an influential internet platform, but threatening people and stooping down to that level isn’t productive.”

Whether it is moral or not, cancellations happen most frequently to those who are very well versed in the public eye. This could be anyone from a singer, to an influencer, an NFL player or even a senator. Many controversies and cancellations arise by the internet circulating past actions or words of a celebrity, hoping to hold those in the wrong accountable for their actions.

“I think [cancel culture] has been good, because you can’t just look at the negatives of cancel culture,” Nguyen said. “There are things that we have decided that are absolutely not allowed in society anymore. We will no longer tolerate blackface, no longer tolerate certain slurs, and other things. We are deciding as a society that we will not tolerate those things, and in that way I think cancel culture largely benefits society because of these new critical norms and I would argue for a more moral norm shift, which is a good thing. But then, on the backside of it, there’s that loss of free speech that has been so integral to our society.”

Cancel culture has made its way into our electronic lives and it is up to those who participate and view to make their decision on what cancel culture means for society and if its effects on people as a whole are more positive or negative.

“I try to look at people first as human beings,” Rodriguez-Bell said. “Everyone is bigger than just their actions. Everyone is flawed. There are very good people that choose or could do a bad action, and all of a sudden, you want to look at them as a bad person instead of a good person who did something bad. I think the internet and the power of social media allows people to feed into it very quickly and pass judgment to fuel a fire.”