Canceling Children Cancels Their Potential: If I Stay Author Speaks Out Against Zero Tolerance (Exclusive)

There’s a mental health crisis happening among young people. If you have kids, know kids, work with kids, this will come as no surprise. And even if you don’t, perhaps you’ve read about the massive rise in depression, anxiety and psychiatric hospitalizations, the unprecedented rise in school absenteeism, the terrifying spike in suicide rates, or the Surgeon General’s advisory on the harm of social media. 

Between the isolation of COVID, fears of school shooters, an overheating planet and social ostracism via their cell phones, the kids are not alright.

One would think that in such stressful times, adults and institutions that serve young people would be even more in tune with helping them navigate the rocky terrain from childhood to adulthood. And while some certainly are, others are moving in two polar opposite directions — either giving kids a free pass for anything and everything. On the other end of the spectrum is the alarming and utterly counterproductive cultural penchant for canceling. Only instead, we call it zero tolerance. 

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer , from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

It is not a new idea. I’ve been writing for and about kids for more than 25 years, starting off as a reporter for Seventeen magazine in 1997. Not long into my tenure, two teenagers in Colorado opened fire on their classmates. Columbine was a tectonic event, the first of what has now become  depressingly commonplace, and not long after the attacks, schools across the country instituted so-called zero-tolerance policies. 

These absolute rules whose violation would result in immediate consequences were meant to prevent future attacks on young people. Schools installed metal detectors and security guards and began enforcing dress and vague conduct codes. 

But these protective policies boomeranged as many young people — disproportionately those who were poor, of color or receiving special education services —were disciplined, suspended or expelled for minor infractions like dressing goth, writing poetry with violent imagery, or even referencing the Columbine massacre. Others were shipped off to dubiously credentialed behavior modification boot camps for being “oppositional” or otherwise penalized for doing the admittedly boneheaded things adolescents sometimes do while their prefrontal cortexes are still developing. 

Twenty-five years later, as technology has opened new avenues for youthful screw-ups,  zero tolerance has only broadened in scope and consequence: Teens and tweens expelled for sexting, or posting political opinions on their social media. Elementary school aged kids suspended for shoving or pulling down their pants. These kids find themselves in a double line of fire, attacked in person and online by their peers (and increasingly, their peers’ parents) and disciplined by the institutions that are meant to guide them. And that’s for minor infractions. When a kid makes a serious mistake, there’s even less room for redemption. 

As in the Columbine days, the new zero tolerance allows adults to abdicate responsibility for doing harder work in exchange for the quick fix. Which essentially sums up today’s cancel culture. What initially started as one of the few levers to hold corrupt power to account — a decade ago, cancellation was primarily about fans calling out celebrities, companies and politicians on social media to pressure them to respond, and perhaps do better — has become a cheap substitute for the more arduous work of creating structural changes that might get to the heart of the racism, homophobia, misogyny and inequity that plague us. And people across the political spectrum are guilty of knee-jerk “off with her head”-ism. Social media today — infinitely more toxic than it was years ago — demands it.

This is harmful enough for adults — see our polarized national discourse. But when we cancel kids, when we model how they should cancel each other, we are doing serious and potentially irreparable harm. Whatever gray area exists between the monstrous and the mundane disappears once it’s ingested into that anti-nuance machine that is social media. Whatever chance there is for growth and learning from mistakes is bulldozed by the speed of our collective thirst for superficial justice. 

Cancellation creates fear — see spiking anxiety rates among teens — and also shame. And shame is a corrosive force. Unlike guilt, which goads us to be better, shame has been clinically shown to shut people down, to increase levels of self-loathing and all the negative impacts that come with it, including violence and depression. Not surprisingly, there is a strong link between incarcerated adults and feelings of shame. 

We can do better. We must do better. 

This is one of the reasons I wrote, Not Nothing, a middle-grade novel about Alex, a 12-year-old boy who makes a serious mistake, doing something truly bad. As he’s awaiting a hearing to decide his fate, a sympathetic social worker arranges for him to volunteer at an assisted-living facility for the summer. There he meets Josey, a 107-year-old Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor. As Josey begins telling Alex the story of Olka, the young Polish Christian woman he fell in love with just before World War II, Alex’s choking anger, self-loathing and shame begin to lift. 

Because in Olka, Alex sees an example of someone who once did a terrible thing to Josey (Josey won’t say what, exactly, because, as he tells Alex, “No one should be remembered for the worst thing they’ve done when they’ve done so many best things”) but who was invited to rise to the occasion of her life. 

The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!

As Alex listens to the story of Olka’s evolution, he begins to wonder how it might feel to rise to the occasion of his own life. This change affects not only Alex but the people around him in a virtuous circle that is the opposite of a shame spiral. It does not undo the terrible thing Alex has done, and he himself knows he may never be granted total forgiveness, but it does not destroy his possibility to do better, to go on to do so many best things. 

One of the privileges of being an author is writing the world as it is, and as you hope it might be. I believe every child deserves the opportunity to grow. To make mistakes that  steer them but do not define them. To have the chance to rise to the occasion of their lives, even if there are stumbles along the way. Come to think of it, I believe most adults deserve this, too.

Not Nothing by Gayle Forman is out Aug. 27, and available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.