You turn on the radio. Your favorite song by J. Cole is playing, but the audio cuts out at all the curse words.

You go to school and read a book with adult themes for your English class. Everyone dances around the odd situation, and the use of certain terms are prohibited by your teacher, even though they’re used in the book.

You come home from school and wait for a new episode of your favorite television show, New Girl, but remember that it only comes on after 9 P.M.

Why? Because the little kids are asleep and won’t end up watching it accidentally.

These are all examples of censorship, which is sadly seen everywhere nowadays. We have started letting other people determine what we should be able to hear and see.

How did we end up in a society filled with such disdain for the truth? Censorship is an inescapable part of all our
lives.

Since the beginning of civilization, people have been plagued by a never-ending battle, fought over what is deemed right and what is deemed wrong.

However, there is no reason in continually attempting to skew the truth by hiding the cold, hard facts with the intention of “shielding” or “protecting” the public.

It makes me wonder: what is the value in meddling with everyone’s rights and allowing them to believe that they live in a perfect world? A fantasy? There is none.

In today’s society, censorship is used in more ways than one could imagine.

The movies and television shows that we watch, and even the musical tunes that we listen to, appear to be filtered in one way or another. Most recently, censorship in music is possibly the most relevant form of censorship.

Popular songs, such as XXXTentacion’s “Sad!” and Drake’s “Nice For What,” whose lyrics are filled with curse words and messages regarding suicide, are becoming targets in yet another round of music censorship.

It is disturbing to watch as censorship slowly takes away the rights that we have been granted for hundreds of years.

When the United States was first established, the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution for a reason: to guarantee us freedoms and rights, such as free speech and free press.

With censorship, these freedoms are stifled and breached.

We need to express our ideas or beliefs however we feel appropriate. Why should outside sources influence our thoughts and actions?

We should be allowed to say whatever we want and let whoever we want to
hear it, hear it.

Our country was built around the idea of everyone having a free, unchanged, uncensored voice. Therefore, censorship is impeding our progress as a society.

In addition, many argue that censoring music from messages of sex, drugs, and violence protects the innocent and youthful ears of children and teenagers.

Parents worry that their children would be exposed to derogatory language and images, such as porn and violence, that they think would ultimately be harmful towards their behavior.

However, do people really think that hearing swears words in a movie, television show or song would indeed harm children and teenagers?

Kids these days will ultimately find ways to watch pornographic content on the internet or even explicit versions of music.

The online world today is too vast and extensive to hinder children from being exposed to such content.

They always find a way to learn about the real world, which is inevitable.

Living in a prim, neat and polished lifestyle filled with rainbows and unicorns do not reflect the real world.

Our own president can be seen throwing around inappropriate terms. Sex scenes are unavoidable on television and movies.

The real world can be ugly and gruesome, but people have to learn to live with it and move on.

Kids and teenagers need to be exposed to these messages now to be better prepared for the time where they fully enter the real world.

It’s understandable that many people do not like the thought of children using profanity or of children
watching inappropriate videos.

However, the reality is that the world is not perfect.

The sooner that children realize the reality that perfection is not available to us in this world, the sooner we can begin living lives because of the imperfections.

I say this for all of my fellow teenagers: we can protect ourselves just fine, thank you.