The Negative Effects Of Censorship's Impact On Society

Ameera Abu-Ali

Mr. Creal

World Literature 10 Block: A

February 18, 2016

Censorship’s impact on society According to Merriam Webster dictionary, censorship is what helps “remove things that are considered to be offensive, immoral, harmful to society, etc.” (Merriam-Webster). Censorship was used to prevent harmful information or data to be in the public eye. It is what was used as a necessary source to avoid damaging details about certain things to get out. It is to restrict information from people. Like for example, in WWI, the soldiers’ letters were being censored in order to protect them from any harm that could be done to the by their enemies. They weren’t allowed to send any information of theirs in their letters, as it was a risk that

Although this development has had both positive and negative impacts on society there are more positive than negative. One way being that it censors out stuff the is inappropriate for children, or young people to be looking at. There are some websites and some content that is not appropriate for people of a young age to be searching for or looking at, and censorship makes sure of this. Censorship in this form is a good thing, it protects certain people from looking at stuff they should not be looking at. Also, it prevents specific information from getting out to particular people that should not be getting it. Censorship works to limit and restrict certain things from certain people, which could be harmful to them or just inappropriate and they should not be looking, reading or writing that kind of stuff. Like for example, the WWI soldier letters were not allowed to send anything they wanted in their letters, since others could get a hold of them and use the information in them against them, like getting their location to attack. “Forbidden information included references to locations, numbers of troops, criticism of superiors and even the weather which might indicate the state of the trenches.” (Letter — P. 6 Line 3). Their letters were checked by upper-class men, who censored any detail that they thought could be harmful to themselves, and their army to make sure that

“No letter is allowed to leave without it having been read by an officer and franked by him on the envelope”(Letter — P.6 line 8). Every letter was checked by the upper-class officers to make sure that it didn’t contain any harmful data. This meant that the soldiers had no privacy whatsoever in the letters they wrote to their loved ones. Not being able to write what they wanted created many conflicts and angerness towards the high-class officials. Another fact that even made these soldiers frustrated was that the upper class soldiers did not tell them if their letters were sent or not. “These letters were never delivered and apparently the sender was never sent a notice of the offense.”(American). On the other hand, in Nicaragua, it is nearly impossible for the government to limit people from having access to any type of information, nor to stop them from expressing personal opinions, since everything is possible with the use of internet. The nicaraguan government censors confidential information from the people, allowing people to only hear a part of the story that does not harm or make them look