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*I was inspired to write this article after reading a post on Geoff Livingston’s (@geoffliving) blog.*

Enough with the harsh criticism. Enough with the cyber bullying. Cathryn Sloane made a mistake, now let’s move on.

Thinking about this situation over the past few weeks made me realize something –  Cathryn Sloane expressed an opinion that others did not like. This happens all the time. She could have expressed it better, but she chose to write the words that she did. She made a mistake, which happens all the time REGARDLESS of age. She didn’t handle criticism very well, which was a failure on her part. But we all have failures sometimes. We all learn from failure. The greatest entrepreneurs in the world say to embrace failure. Did she learn about social media crisis management? Most probably, in my opinion.

But the biggest wrong that happened from this situation was that some people were generalizing Cathryn’s post to the attitudes of every single person bellow the age of 25. Being 21 myself, I was scared that Cathryn had tarnished my reputation, as I am trying to find employment in Social Media Marketing. I wrote a post in response to express my opinion. I can say, as a young Millennial, we do not all think the same way as Cathryn Sloane.

All of a sudden, because of an opinion that an angry girl posted online, we (as young Millenials) should never be hired to manage a social media presence for a brand? I don’t think that’s right, or fair. People of all ages make the same mistakes as Cathryn made. It has nothing to do with age, just as a good social media manager has nothing to do with age.

Some senior level marketing professionals took her post very negatively, and acted out. Some were excessively harsh, and entered into a realm of cyber bullying, which was completely wrong of their part. On the other hand, some others expressed their sincere opinion, and offered her a solution. They were angry, but they understood why she did it in the first place. THANK YOU to all that offered constructive criticism. Young professionals, like Cathryn Sloane, need that type of feedback.

You’ve made mistakes before. You’ve failed at something before. You’ll fail again! We all do. That’s life. Let’s take age out of the equation, please. You can say “I would have never said such a thing,” but that’s the easiest thing to say right now. Hindsight is 20/20.

Let’s all leave Catryn Sloane alone, and invite her to come back online. Let’s tell her that it’s ok to make mistakes, people aren’t perfect.