On that other post I made about âyou do not have the obligation or the right to control how other people engage with media,â one of the examples I listed was âpeople are consuming media theyâre too old for/people are consuming media theyâre too young for.â And one comment I see popping up in the notes of that post is some variation of âI mostly agree with this post, except for the point about kids consuming media theyâre too young for. Obviously Iâm against that.â
And I feel like this is one of those points that freedom-to-read has conceded too easily, the right of young readers thrown under the bus because OBVIOUSLY weâre against minors being able to access inappropriate things! OBVIOUSLY we donât want to expose THE KIDS to THE TERRIBLE THINGS. Obviously, we still have to protect people from content theyâre too young for!
We donât.
And I could fill in here a standard argument about how queer resources are always going to be up-rated when it comes to age restrictions because of how theyâre viewed as inherently more adult/sexual/inappropriate than their cishet counterparts, and how this blocks queer kids from getting the resources they need, and that would all be true, of course.
But we donât need to Protect The Kids From The Bad Books in the broader scale either!
Thereâs a long rambling essay to be had here about my own experiences as a kid reading media that was considered ânot age appropriateâ for me, and how for the most part it was all stuff I was fine with (Lord of the Rings, Clan of the Cave Bear) and on a few occasions it was stuff I wasnât fine with (Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Candyman) and it upset me and I wished I hadnât seen it. But what it ultimately comes down to is this:
Kids need to be able to learn where their limits are, and they need to be able to set their own boundaries, as a part of learning to be an adult. And part of the process of learning to do that is to come up against stuff thatâs outside their limits, and stepping back from it. And they canât do that if theyâre being artificially restricted from mature content.
A certain amount of upsetting experience is part of this process, and it doesnât need to be traumatizing if the kid in question has control over their own engagement. Frankly I canât think of a single more gentle and controllable way to test their limits than in a book, where there are no images, no sounds, and the kid can disengage at absolutely any time simply by closing the book.
They have to learn to draw their own borders sometime. Let them learn at their own pace.
Would it be better if kids had trusted adults in their lives guiding them through mature content, who intimately understand the kidâs sensitivity level and can recommend appropriate materials, and provide a supportive framework for working through material that turns out to be upsetting? Sure. Absolutely every kid in the world deserves an understanding, compassionate and supportive adult. But since we canât legislate the existence of good parents, the absolute least  we can do is allow kids the freedom to control their own choices.
