I think it may be possible that YA is, on like a … cultural/societal level, bad.
Virtually any fiction published in my lifetime IMO.
Caus "PG" fluffiness has a pile of neolib assumptions a mile high?
I think this issue gets caught on two different points. The first is the argument that there is well written YA, which of course there is. The second is that by it's nature, there is much of the human experience that YA can't consider so it's not healthy for adults to only consume children's media
Different but similar... Do you think pop music is generally bad?
no, but scifi for putatively grown men is objectively bad
As some-on currently working on a YA Novel (or two) i would certainly be receptive to seeing that take explored.
I too am a hater of most consumer art. Until you get to movies. But that's kind of the problem, individually it isn't an issue to have schlock. However aggregately, it's terrible.
like, bad for us, I mean. Like junk food, or cars.
I tend to agree, and I think it might be a counter-intuitive stance in a world where the mere act of reading has been moralized and turned into a virtue in and of itself - "reading is good for you", no qualifiers, no caveats.