Censorship for the Youths

People disagree greatly on ideas of censorship for different groups in society. Most people will agree on the necessity of censorship for young children, but not all. People mainly disagree on the issue of censorship for the ‘youth:’ teenagers and young adults, and adults themselves.

Children possess the most readily and easily molded minds of all people. Young children often imitate what they see and hear without knowing the meaning or reasons behind it. Children also retain these behaviors, which become habits, and they become incorporated into the child’s character. For instance, a child may not know the meaning of many swear words or other vulgarities, but if they hear them will likely repeat them. Repeated use of these words ingrains the words into the child’s vocabulary, and become commonly and easily used by the time the child becomes a youth.

For this reason most parents, older siblings, and other members of the community see fit to censor themselves and others around small children. Knowing the susceptibility of children, people seek to shield them from ‘bad’ influences by censorship. Most people live by the idea that “what’s good (or ok) for me isn’t good for them.” Adults almost universally censor children from many things such as language, violence, sex, drugs, and vulgarities: things youths and adults often find amusing or entertaining. Young children don’t often complain about this censoring, as they probably don’t even realize its effects on their lives most of the time.

Censorship also extends to youths in the United States, until the ages of seventeen and eighteen of certain things: excessive violence, drug references, sex, and some profanity. Youths possess the experience to know they are being censored, and are being censored by federal law rather than elders ‘looking out’ for them. Youths also think themselves old enough to believe they know the best choices for themselves without others deciding for them: they don’t need someone to censor them, but can censor themselves instead. Most adults believe a youth reaches a point where they can do so: seventeen and eighteen, but to many youths, this comes later than necessary.

There is only one group of people in our society (the United States) not censored: adults. Adults (people over the age of eighteen) can access anything they wish so long as it doesn’t break any laws. Some people (both youths and adults) disagree with this, and believe in universal censoring of certain things: such as instructions on how to build a bomb. While it may seem a betrayal of our freedoms to take away our access to anything, in reality wrongdoers lose access to the information, and the average person loses nothing. An honest person has no need for bomb-building instructions, so it makes no difference if they’re available on the internet or not. A potential terrorist, on the other hand, has great interest in the instructions, but should not have access to them. Logic concludes that the instructions should not exist in an accessible form, because those who would access and use the material should not have access, and to it makes no difference to those who would not use the information.

Certain material should definitely not be available for young children to access: they need to be censored for ‘their own good.’ Youths also should be censored from some things: but the age at which they become ‘uncensored’ may be questionable: by the time someone can question the censorship, should they be censored? Censorship should extend to all people in terms of material released for purely harmful purposes (as in the case of bomb instructions), but adults should not be censored from information or other material: their judgment has to be trusted.