| Chapter 2: | Framing the question: A review of the relevant literature |
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This philosophy and the values of other prominent leaders and their professional associations should be kept in mind during this study as a possible influencing factor in the school library environment. One research question in the study will be to what extent filtering in a school library may infringe on students’ First Amendment rights.
Where is the Harm?
A most interesting subset of the recent literature on intellectual freedom involving sexually explicit speech questions the need for protective measures at all. It is simply assumed, in many segments of society, that children suffer harm from exposure to materials considered pornographic. The NRC study, Youth, Pornography and the Internet (Thornburgh, 2002), devotes an entire chapter to studying the research base on the impact of sexually explicit material. Empirical research in this area is mostly non—existent due to legal and ethical concerns of Institutional Review Boards across the country. The Committee concludes that “the extant scientific literature does not support a scientific consensus on a claim that exposure to sexually explicit material does—or does not—have a negative impact on children” (p. 362).
Mitchell, Finkelhor, and Wolak (2003) came to the same conclusion about long term effects, but conducted a national survey of youth to examine the question of immediate harm from inadvertent viewing of sexual materials online. They found that 25% of youth using the Internet regularly had at least one unwanted exposure to sexually explicit materials in the past year. Of these, “it is clear from their reactions that the majority of youth regard their personal unwanted exposures as not