Why, in the 1700s, they did. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/media’s-first-moral-panic https://www.historytoday.com/archive/media’s-first-moral-pan... ht

Why, in the 1700s, they did. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/media’s-first-moral-panic https://www.historytoday.com/archive/media’s-first-moral-pan... https://didyouknowfacts.com/facts/as-novels-became-more-prominent-during-the-1700s/ https://didyouknowfacts.com/facts/as-novels-became-more-prom... https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Novel-Reading-Panic-in-18-th-Century-in-England-Vogrin/ea07e5f58509e8b2bf9db1f9777b9ef614294825#paper-header https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Novel-Reading-Pani... Some went so far as to ban reading for certain groups. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_during_the_slave_period_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_during_the_slave_per...