A new report looking at teenagers' attitudes towards censorship of their reading habits and library use is now available at  http://www.ebase.uce.ac.uk/docs/censorship-teenage-focus-groups-report.pdf

Based on a series of focus groups involving 88 young people, this research suggested the following: ·

• To help both teenagers and their parents, books for teenagers should include guidance on the cover about the incidence of sex, violence, drugs, swearing etc ·
• Teenagers themselves should be involved in reviewing books and offering guidance on their suitability. 
•  Librarians and booksellers should ensure they offer teenagers guidance, not unexplained restrictions.
• Libraries for teenagers need to ensure that their stock contains a range of titles suitable for various combinations of emotional maturity and reading age.
• More opportunities to read books dealing with controversial issues within the curriculum should be explored.
• Efforts need to be made to involve parents in their teenager’s reading, making them more aware of the content of books and better able to offer informed advice to their child.
• Internet filtering in schools needs to be re-examined. It is currently extremely unhelpful and unsophisticated.
• Rather than focusing on restricting access, it is imperative that teenagers are taught how to make informed choices about the information they gather from the Internet and the books they chose to read.

Write Away would be interested to hear what the teenagers in your school think about this issue. E-mail us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it