This is not a particularly original thought (I've probably made this exact post before myself) but one of the bleaker vast cultural gulfs out there is and likely shall remain the one between 'material children can understand and engage with' and 'material guardians and gatekeepers are comfortable thinking about their children engaging with'.
The beautiful but brief period where video stores just threw every animated movie in the same section and vast numbers of parents just assumed all cartoons were for kids was a little golden age in this regard. We need to come up with a new way to trick middle class helicopter parents into letting their 7-year-olds watch Watership Down again.
I've mentioned this before, but the only time I've ever been concerned that a piece of media was potentially upsetting to children was a commercial. Otherwise, I assume kids can handle anything and it's only the parents who need to be catered to.
Books! A lot of books are still like this! You can easily find books, even targeted at children where people have fucking limbs ripped off and where deeply horrific topics are discussed. And it's so much easier for kids to get their hands on the stuff that is not targeted at them than with other types of media.
When His Dark Materials (which was not conceived as a MG/YA series, but got marketed as such) got a live action series adaption they went and made it all more "adult" and also had to cut out and tone down pretty much everything in it because between the things you can describe in a book with target audience around 12+ and the things you can show in a series aimed primarily at adults, but rated to let teenagers watch as well, there is such a vast fucking gulf it's unreal.
This also extends to manga, at least where I live. Like, a tweenaged kid could walk into a bookstore and buy something like Made in Abyss no problem.
I think that's why libraries are targets and book bans are such a trend now-- someone found the Book Loophole and is desperate to close it.
