Authors Hate Him: This writer claims BookTok is ruining Young Adult fiction

By Michal Gawlik, Arts and Literature Editor

When you think about the books you read as a teenager, on the cusp of puberty, you probably don’t imagine Jane Eyre or To Catch a Mockingbird. Instead, you most likely remember sitting under the covers in your room at three in the morning, reading fan fiction on Wattpad or AO3 until you fell asleep with your phone in your hand. If that was reality for you, don’t worry; that’s how many of us started our adventures with literature. When you’re growing up, overwhelmed with hormones, school, and all the emotions you’re experiencing, reading badly written, unimaginative romance texts is an incredibly comforting pastime activity. Eventually, you realize that what you’re reading is nothing short of pathetic, and you develop a better, more sophisticated taste in literature. You manage to leave behind those cringe-worthy texts, closed off forever in the safe digital spheres of Wattpad and AO3, and live happily ever after… 

… So, who has been allowing for all that content to leak into serious print and publishing? Yes, that’s right. What we used to think of as cringy, poorly written but exciting and entertaining for an awkward teenager has left the safe space of the internet and absolutely flooded the publishing houses. The novels are getting more and more violent, the language harsher and the expected audience younger. 

The shift of this sort of poorly written young adult fan fiction written by teens for teens, meant to stay within the walls of the internet forever, to the major printed media became visible between 2019 and 2020 when TikTok was getting more and more popular and the pandemic was forcing people to stay at home. The trail of events afterwards goes more or less as follows: bored teens takes to TikTok, BookTok comes into existence, BookTok recommendations made by twenty-year-olds get picked up by thirteen-year-olds, authors of what is clearly adult content see money in writing YA fiction; adult authors (many of whom were raised on the previously-mentioned poorly written Wattpad fiction) produce YA fiction, publishing houses pick up on the genre’s popularity, and desperate parents buy these books for their children to get them to read anything at all instead of watching TikTok all day long. 

Now we have come to a point where books filled with violence (including sexual violence), misogyny, and personal issues of the author are desperately desired by young teenagers because they find the plot exciting without the slightest idea of how much damage content as such is doing to their self-esteem and world view. Parents keep buying these novels for their children, oblivious to what is hidden behind that aesthetically-pleasing cover, because they’re simply happy their child is reading any books. 

You may be wondering, ‘But Michal, if these texts existed before on the internet and teens were reading them anyway, what’s so bad about having them in a printed published version?’ It’s the lack of shame that comes with reading books of such content. They are globally published, wrapped in beautiful, aesthetic covers ready to be read at home, on the train, at school, in front of your family, or anywhere you would like. Wattpad and AO3 did not give us that freedom; if something was written on the internet, parents would often deem it dangerous and forbidden, so we would hide ourselves reading that adult and unsafe content for young minds. Thanks to that we would associate actions performed in these texts as shameful and immoral, eventually realizing the difference between good and bad behaviour in various social interactions. When presented with thousands of printed books with more or less the same content and praised for reading them, teenagers miss the most crucial step of growing up - learning from your mistakes.

Just a month ago, on Christmas Day, I witnessed my younger cousins, aged twelve to fifteen, receive dozens of harmful YA fiction novels each. I saw and heard the praises coming from my older family members for reading so many books and being so clever. I made the difficult decision to ask their parents if they knew what these books were about, and was promised that they would look into it, but that was the best I could do. 

So, next time you notice your young family members going around reading harmful literature, take the matter into your own hands and protect them from the wrath of Colleen Hoover, Sally Thorne, and many others to come. For some more guidance on specific books and authors teenagers shouldn’t read, have a quick look at the following videos here and here.