The DOI matches its Crossref record.
“Harmful to Minors” : How Book Bans Hurt Adolescent Development
Abstract
The following article analyzes the current wave of book bans in the United States of America. Book banning has a long history; the modern predominant focus on young people's reading materials grew around fifty years ago with the increased publication of realistic depictions of the lived experiences, identities, and personhoods of children and young people. Nonetheless, the current form of censorship is different: bigger, more politicized, and more targeted at those living with marginalized identities, particularly people of color and those with LGBTQ+ identities. This article argues that book banning places a unique burden on adolescent development and is particularly harmful to those living with marginalized identities.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Evidence across various types of bans for adolescents (eg, smartphone bans, banning transgender youth from sports participation, and book bans) indicates that such restrictions carry several negative consequences for their mental health [6-9].”
From Social Media Use in Adolescents: Bans, Benefits, and Emotion Regulation Behaviors (2024) · cites this paper as [7]
Citations
Cites
Still being checked.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Social Media Use in Adolescents: Bans, Benefits, and Emotion Regulation Behaviors
McAlister, K. L., Beatty, C. C., Smith-Caswell, J. E., Yourell, J. L., & Huberty, J. L. (2024) · JMIR Mental Health · doi:10.2196/64626 · Cited by 47
School library professionals’ perspectives on current and future workforce challenges
Merga, M. K., & Mat Roni, S. (2026) · Journal of Librarianship and Information Science · doi:10.1177/09610006241309104 · Cited by 15
“While not new (Pickering, 2023), the ramping up of book bans and political action constraining the SLP role in some contexts in recent times warrants greater attention; even countries where this is not currently an issue can face changes in government that may introduce relevance of this issue in…”
Snaider, C. (2024) · Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood · doi:10.1177/14639491241293469 · Cited by 4
Rabalais, C. B. (2025) · Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy · doi:10.1002/jaal.70008 · Cited by 3
Newspaper framing of attempts to ban LGTBQ books in the U.S., U.K., and Ireland
Marshall, L. H., & Bien-Aimé, S. (2025) · Media Culture & Society · doi:10.1177/01634437251331901 · Cited by 2
Metadata
- Authors
- Pickering, G.
- Affiliations
- Pratt Institute (US)
- Corresponding author
- Pickering, Grace
- Venue
- The Serials Librarian
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2023-05-19
- Volume
- 84
- Issue
- 1-4
- Pages
- 32-45
- ISSN
- 0361-526X (ISSN-L)
- 1541-1095
- OpenAlex
- W4387093485
- Cited by
- 15
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 4
- FWCI
- 11.78
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Serials Librarian (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Library Science and Administration
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Themes in Literature Analysis
- Social Sciences › Law › Law, Rights, and Freedoms
- Keywords
- book bans, censorship, adolescent development, young adult literature, marginalized identities, LGBTQ youth, people of color
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
