Following the pandemic’s influence on reading, Scarlett Acres delves into the unspoken issue of children reading erotica and its impact on future relationships and sex.
(Follow this link for the full version where I received a first on my dissertation – https://preview.shorthand.com/1rXuvov38oWtAAoG)
The 2023 ‘What Kids Are Reading’ report discovered that 24 per cent of children read more in 2021-2022 than the previous year.
Finding aspects such as social media, particularly TikTok, helped children engage with books.
Media has regularly faced questions and conversations around the impact of gaming, films and TV on children from the likes of psychologist Bandura.
However, there seems to be a lack of research into the impact that reading can also have on children, particularly how reading explicit scenes too young could affect future beliefs about sex and their relationships in adult life.
Reading explicit scenes and also admitting this to others, is seen as a taboo subject, but with the rise of reading and easy access, children of all ages can and have read such material.
And when lockdown began in March 2020, people across the world found they had more free time than they ever had before.
With this came the rise of reading and BookTok.
“…blurbs very rarely go ‘oh and they have some very kinky sex so don’t let young kids read this’.”
Ella Welch, 18
BookTok
TikTok soared to new heights during the pandemic with millions around the world joining in trends, dancing and creating videos to help them get by for the next few months.
But the readers formed a new community and section within the app, called BookTok, and has directly changed the book industry as we know it from impacting the New York Times best-selling list to raising sales of authors and increasing the number of readers across the world.
The hashtag ‘#booktok’ alone currently has 132.9 billion views.
Whilst BookTok has showcased a wide range of genres and authors, there have been particular authors who have thrived through the app.
One author being Colleen Hoover, whose writing has become a phenomenon with tens of her books trending on the app and dominating ‘The New York Times Bestseller List’ with six of her books currently on the list.
Including ‘It Ends With Us’ which has been on the ‘Paperback Trade Fiction’ list for 103 weeks despite the amount of backlash this particular book and author has received.
The book, targeted as a “romance” book, follows a relationship depicted and defined by domestic violence with graphic and explicit sexual scenes throughout.
Receiving a lot of backlash for her books with the sexual scenes, domestic violence and toxic relationships and even created a colouring book for ‘It Ends With Us’ despite the context of the story, which quickly got cancelled after many complaints.
Publishers and book subscriptions still promote the book as a “spicy read”.
“I’m pretty sure I’m asexual, but I do constantly wonder whether I feel like this because I realise nothing can ever live up to what I’ve read…”
Ella, 18
18-year-old booktoker, Ella, joined the community in 2020 when her GCSE exams were cancelled and has therefore been a part of the booktok community since the very start.
She says: “This problem of ‘reading books that are too old for you’ existed way before Booktok but Booktok has probably just helped augment it.”
Ella has gained 39.7k followers along with 2.5 million likes and has been invited to publishing events, sent PR packages and attended movie premiers such as ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ with lead actress Daisy Edgar Jones.
The power TikTok has had on the book industry is easy to see but it is just as easy to see the impact it has over young children, with TikTok reporting Generation Z (people born between the late 90s to the 2010s) are the main target audience, suggesting that young people could also be influenced like the publishing industry has.
Ella says:
“The rise of dark romance is prominent on booktok as of recent which is also worrying, not because it’s a prominently bad genre, but because promoting these books without giving full context can be very misleading.
“Especially if they have discreet covers and then it’s easy for a parent or child to buy that book without checking what it involves and of course blurbs very rarely go ‘oh and they have some very kinky sex so don’t let young kids read this’.”
One particular dark romance which is currently popular on BookTok is ‘Haunting Adeline’ by H.D. Carlton which follows a girl who falls in love with her stalker and serial killer with extremely graphic sex which involves violence heavily throughout.
Ella believes that reading books about fictional relationships with scenes of a sexual nature will give you an unrealistic view of what normal sex looks like.
After beginning to read smut, books which include pornographic and largely focuses on this fact, at the early age of 13, Ella thinks this has directly impacted her in later life.
“I’m pretty sure I’m asexual, but I do constantly wonder whether I feel like this because I realise nothing can ever live up to what I’ve read – and therefore reading all this from a young age has definitely influenced how I’m finding it hard to put a definitive label on my sexuality and how I feel.” Says Ella.
The feeling that the media gives a false sense of hope and a ‘happily ever after’ is no stranger to society but the possibility that reading as a child could affect your sexuality is a topic not explored.
The popularity of reading on BookTok with a wide range of ages and audiences, raises the question around bookstores and their rules.
A Waterstones employee, who wishes to remain anonymous and has worked with the company for almost two years, says: “We don’t have specific guidelines or rules, at most we can mention the content warnings or trigger warnings in the books but that is all we do.”
They add: “With the rise of BookTok, we’ve seen a lot of promotion of adult books to younger audiences, like Colleen Hoover and Sarah J Maas and subsequently seeing young readers buy books that are ‘New Adult’ or ‘Adult’.”
Bookstores having a lack of guidance or rules, while potentially being hard to put in place, may therefore be having an indirect impact on children’s well-being as well as their future.
“I think when one has limited life experience and underdeveloped critical reasoning abilities, it complicates matters.”
Philosopher Dionne Van Reenen
The Impact
Philosopher Dionne Van Reenen has and still is researching the issue of body politics, particularly concerning eroticised bodies, from a mediated culture perspective.
Dionne states: “The main concern in research is that it may be reliably argued that children do not possess the psychological or neurological development to understand graphic sexual information but they do have access to it.
“Yet they may prematurely receive this content, internalise it, and indeed try to experiment, imitate or even idealise it.”
In one way or another, children find a way to access certain material or accidentally come across it due to lack of guidance or conversations about the content that would be taken in.
Dionne Van Reenen believes that whilst we should be aware of what children access and possibly address the messages that are coming through to them in the media, hindering their research could also be just as harmful.
“Not allowing a child to explore and experiment when they are at appropriate ages to do so is harmful to their healthy development.” States Dionne.
Part of Dionne’s research follows Fifty Shades of Grey and how it formed part of the pornographic mainstream.
Dionne says: “I think when one has limited life experience and underdeveloped critical reasoning abilities, it complicates matters considerably.
Dionne adds: “This problem, along with the problem of forming and internalising unreal sexual/bodily ideals, as well as not really understanding their own, and others’ bodies’ pleasure or how to feel or access that, may shape distorted expectations in their actual relationships and interfere with a child’s healthy development of their (sexual) self.”
Society experienced this change when BDSM became popularised after Fifty Shades of Grey was released in cinemas in 2015 when people seemed to be interested in this lifestyle despite having never shown a previous preference for it.
Retailers reported increased sales of BDSM equipment and lingerie following the popularity of the books at the time, having now sold over 100 million copies worldwide and joining the list as one of the fastest paperbacks to sell of all time.
“Just because I have good intentions doesn’t mean that every author does.”
Adelina Taneva, 27
Whilst children won’t admit the type of content they read online, older readers regularly admit to reading smut or spicy books when they were too young.
Wattpad, an app created for users to write their own work and read the ones produced, has been a popular app within the reading community for many years, particularly with the younger generation.
Wattpad is regularly known to readers as an app with explicit content, whether you search for it or not.
The app, despite having sections gathered for all genres and ages, doesn’t seem to filter or include warnings with the fact many of their books include explicit scenes, even teenage fiction.
Author Adelina Taneva began on Wattpad just over a decade ago following in her grandfather’s footsteps as a writer.
Beginning as a reader on the app, she and her friend began to make up stories and eventually began to upload them.
Whilst being a special needs teaching assistant, Adelina has self-published three books, with her fourth book being released May 31, 2023.
Adelina believed she started reading “spicy” books way before people would have deemed them appropriate, but that authors shouldn’t be blamed for the content that children may read.
“Now as an author I can’t control the age of my readers even if you put warnings but there are thousands of TV shows, movies and games that include a lot more harmful information and stereotyping that children can take in and accept which isn’t being challenged.” Says Adelina.
TikTok users have discussed the argument around putting the blame on the authors but if the authors have clearly targeted a certain audience and used trigger warnings, it is the child who has chosen what to read despite the age rating or warnings.
But this is if there are trigger warnings, which majority of the time, there aren’t.
From past research, it has been proven that children can learn from watching others or watching or playing certain types of media, however, this doesn’t consider that people can willingly make their own interpretations and decisions.
Adelina says: “I definitely think my work can impact children as books are a form of art and art is something that shapes us and builds our character but, in some instances, it does matter how mature and open the child is to learn and grow.”
She also adds: “Just because I have good intentions doesn’t mean that every author does.”
Another author who started out on Wattpad was ‘imaginator1D’, better known now as Anna Todd, writer of the ‘After’ series.
One Direction fan Anna Todd took to the app to write a fan fiction series of the band and soon found fame like no other Wattpad author as her series has now reached 711 million reads on the app alone.
Depicting Harry Styles as a toxic and abusive alcoholic, we see his character romanticised by readers so much so that the books have now produced four films released in cinemas, Netflix and Amazon Prime, but with different names in order to not align with the band.
Young children and teenage girls who were fans of the band would have viewed a trending fan fiction and ultimately checked it out without knowing the true underlying content.
Authors who include “spicy” scenes, such as Tessa Bailey and Sarah J Mass, are amongst the most popular books to trend on BookTok which suggests the popularity and the higher probability that younger people will recommend books that are too old for them.
Hashtag views on TikTok for authors who have included explicit scenes:
- Sarah J Maas – 2 Billion
- Elle Kennedy – 430.7 Million
- Tessa Bailey – 182.5 Million
- Lauren Asher – 253.1 Million
Yet, there are also children’s authors that include content that parents would question their children reading.
Famous children’s author Jacqueline Wilson, best known for the Tracey Beaker series along with the TV adaption, has released many questionable books.
Love Lessons follows a fourteen-year-old girl who develops a close relationship with her art teacher, and eventually kisses him in his car.
Yet, there are also children’s authors that include content that parents would question their children reading.
Famous children’s author Jacqueline Wilson, best known for the Tracey Beaker series along with the TV adaption, has released many questionable books.
Love Lessons follows a fourteen-year-old girl who develops a close relationship with her art teacher, and eventually kisses him in his car.
So, whilst children reading older books too young is also a problem, there seem to be younger books that could implement these views and potentially normalise them early on in life.
Teaching assistant and Mother of two, Kathleen Fitzgerald, worked at St Vincent’s Catholic Primary School in Altrincham for multiple years.
Working with children between six and seven years old in years one and two, helping children with their reading abilities was their primary role.
Through her work, she absorbed and learnt about children’s learning developments.
Kathleen says: “They will absorb any information given to them in books, fact and fiction isn’t a focus, it is just all information to them.”
Being a mother of two teenage girls, Kathleen also spoke about the idea of her girls reading sexual content at a young age: “If I knew what my girls were reading, I would want to teach them that not all content is accurate and whilst I am worried that media could affect them, putting rules in place isn’t always the best because it’s likely they’ll access the content in a different form of media anyway.”
The Next Chapter
With the lack of guidance and rules in bookstores along with reading apps such as Wattpad and Kindle, it suggests that work could be implemented to hinder the possibility of impacting children’s future relationships and their beliefs around sex.
However, research may also suggest there are dangerous implications from doing so, censorship may become a bigger problem by limiting one type of media and children will find another way to access this material.
Although implementing these guidelines could be extremely hard to follow, there needs to be a conversation around the unspoken issues of children reading the wrong books.
There are 50 shades of conversations still needed.
Signed by Scarlett 
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