In the summer of 2020, Maddie Ziegler—best known for appearing in Sia’s “Chandelier” video when she was 11—posted an earnest apology to her Twitter feed. Videos of her laughingly engaging in “ignorant and racially insensitive” behavior when she was nine were circulating online, and the internet demanded an explanation.

“I’m honestly ashamed and I’m truly sorry for my actions. The decisions I made then are absolutely not the decisions I would make today,” the then-17-year-old wrote. “We have all made mistakes in our lives and as we grow up we educate ourselves and learn to be better people.”

In her contrition, the Dance Moms alum joined in a new tradition of celebrities apologizing for the online misbehavior of their childhood selves. In recent years, we’ve seen Justin Bieber, at 20, apologizing for a “childish and inexcusable” racist joke caught on camera when he was 15; beauty vlogger Zoella, at 27, apologizing for offensive Twitter posts from eight years earlier; and Camila Cabello, at age 22, apologizing for racist Tumblr posts from when she was 14 and 15.

On some level, you have to feel for them, growing up young and dumb without the mercy of privacy. It’s one of those areas where, for once, stars really are just like us—or at least like the Gen Zers and younger millennials who spent their formative years online, unknowingly setting their own traps.

Offensive language is offensive no matter the age of the speaker, but there’s something farcical in Ziegler soberly asserting she’s not the person she was at nine—a child apologizing for childishness. Her apology, along with the outrage that prompted it, raises an interesting question: What’s the age of responsibility for online transgressions?

When it comes to criminal justice, there’s an underlying assumption that youth doesn’t disqualify you from culpability. In Scotland, the age of criminal responsibility was only recently raised from eight to 12, while in Qatar, kids as young as seven can be convicted of crimes. In America, where most states have no minimum age for responsibility, more than 30,000 kids under the age of 10 were arrested between 2013 and 2018.

But youth justice advocates have long maintained children should be afforded more leniency and empathy for their actions, particularly because the effects of putting them through the system (which disproportionately targets the poor, people of color and other vulnerable communities) can last a lifetime. Also, studies have shown the prefrontal cortex—the brain’s decision-making center—doesn’t fully develop until 25 and, in the West, young people tend to age out of delinquency by their early 20s. 

Instead, groups like the National Juvenile Justice Network suggest that young offenders be diverted to restorative justice programs that emphasize taking responsibility for one’s actions and making amends with affected victims and communities. While you may be too young to go through the criminal justice system, they posit, you’re never too young to be held accountable.

Learning to take responsibility is an essential part of growing up, no matter who you are, and how we respond when we’re confronted with our past misdeeds (including our digital ghosts) is a show of character. So apologizing, while uncomfortable and embarrassing, is never a bad thing, not really. What matters most is how we proceed going forward.

This is the position in which Ziegler and co. now find themselves. Without the threat of punishment (none of the celebrities mentioned have been incarcerated, or canceled) they’ve been given the opportunity to acknowledge their wrongdoings, express regret and put it on record that they’ve matured past the ignorance of youth. Now, they have the rest of their adult lives to prove it.