In 1999, Stephen Chbosky wrote a book that would kick-start a censorship revolution. His novel “Perks of Being A Wallflower” discusses the hardships of high school, as well as the bad behaviors of young adults, through the epistolary missives a gay teenage narrator.

However, the book received huge backlash from parents and schools, calling attention from a group called Parents Against Bad Books in Schools.

In 2009, ten years after its publication, the novel was still one of the most challenged books, and it again received huge attention, leading up to the movie adaptation in 2012.

So schools responded, telling students not to read the book and keeping copies out of the school libraries and classrooms. In many public schools, censorship has been enforced under the ruse of protection. Instead of addressing the themes many of these books present (i.e. alcohol and drug use, teenage sex and violence), school systems brush them under the proverbial rug.

Censorship aims to protect and prohibit the children and adolescents from reading the mature topics these books discuss and to prevent young adult novels from promoting this behavior.

One part of that is true.

Today’s young adult novels often portray teenage lifestyles wrought with drugs, alcohol, sex and other habits that are often connected to an unhealthy lifestyle, but this isn’t a complete stretch from the life that today’s teens are living.

The targeted young adult novels are mostly realistic fiction. The key word being: realistic. While the lifestyle shown in these novels does not represent all teens, the themes are real.

According to a survey conducted by The Recovery Village, 86 percent of teens report knowing someone who drinks alcohol or does drugs during the school day. This isn’t even including the alcohol and/or drugs consumed off school property.

So it’s not just problems in these fictional books, they are problems in these students’ lives, their real lives. And they are problems that were prominent in American society before these books were written.

Instead of attacking the books that are getting these problems noticed, instead of banning the books and pretending the issues aren’t there, American schools should address the problems head-on and find ways to help the students who need help.

Censorship should not be encouraged, and by silencing the issues that are addressed in the realistic fiction of young adult novels, censorship is silencing the voices of thousands of people who need to be heard.