The Popularity of #BookTok and the Downfall of Age Appropriate Books

If you haven’t heard there’s been a slew of TikToker’s working in libraries and bookstores that are more-than-a-little fed up with pre-teen and teen girls reading books far outside their age group.

The controversy lies between letting kids read whatever they want to and reading what’s considered ‘age-appropriate.’

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One of the common arguments is that when we were young we read books–and fanfics–that were not appropriate at all.

The Difference Between Then and Now

The distinctive difference, however, is that when we were reading those fanfics on AO3 they had tags, content and trigger warnings, and could be highly filtered to include and exclude what we wanted. Essentially, we knew what we were getting into. We had to search for it, we had to include it in the tags. Was it inappropriate, sure, but we were never going in blind.

That’s the difference I want to speak about. We were informed. Many of the young readers now (and their parents) are not.

#BookTok

Printing content warnings within a novel itself is a relatively new concept, and it’s thanks to the popularity of #BookTok and adult…