Die Studie hat die Wirksamkeit von Auslöserwarnungen in realen Szenarien getestet und zeigt, dass die überwiegende Mehrheit der jungen Erwachsenen sich dafür entscheidet, sie zu ignorieren
Die Studie hat die Wirksamkeit von Auslöserwarnungen in realen Szenarien getestet und zeigt, dass die überwiegende Mehrheit der jungen Erwachsenen sich dafür entscheidet, sie zu ignorieren
18 Kommentare
> The study tracked 261 participants aged 17 to 25 over a seven-day period who were asked to keep a daily diary noting when they encountered trigger warnings and whether they chose to approach or avoid the content.
> “Trigger warnings seem to foster a ‘forbidden fruit’ effect for many people whereby when something is off-limits, it often becomes more tempting,” says Dr Bridgland from the College of Education, Psychology and Social Work.
>“This may be because negative or disturbing information tends to stand out and feel more valuable or unique compared to everyday information.
>
>“And since trigger warnings are often short and vague, sometimes as simple as just “TW”, they leave a gap in knowledge about what’s coming.
>The study also showed no significant relationship between mental health risk markers—such as trauma history, PTSD symptoms, and other psychopathological traits – and the likelihood of avoiding content flagged with a warning.
>
>In fact, people with higher levels of PTSD, anxiety, or depression were no more likely to avoid content with trigger warnings than anyone else.
[“I’m always curious”: Tracking young adults exposure and responses to social media trigger warnings in daily life – ScienceDirect](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005791625000242?via%3Dihub)
for me its helps me brace myself. I have heeded them in the past too
Who told them that the point of trigger warnings was to let people avoid the content though? The point is to let people try to not get triggered, either by avoiding the content or by engaging with it anyway having been warned.
Trigger warnings aren’t meant for the majority of people. They aren’t even for the majority of people with „trauma history, PTSD symptoms, and other psychopathological traits.“
They’re meant for the smaller group who will have some kind of adverse effect from the material the warning is about.
That doesn’t make trigger warnings useless. Young adults are adults and should be allowed to make informed decisions.
I also ignore wheelchair ramps, I guess we should remove them…?
But the whole point of them is for people to be prepared and be able to interact with the content
New study also shows that most people ignore braille signs. Clearly they are useless as well and should be removed. What a joke of an article and waste of time.
I ignore trigger warnings because I’m not easily triggered by things. Is there really more to it than that?
Yes, because most people aren’t going to be triggered by the content. That’s not who the warnings are for. They provide an opportunity for the very small percentage of people who *may* be triggered by the content to either **brace for it** or avoid it.
The article makes it seem like the sole point of trigger warnings is for “vulnerable” people to avoid the material entirely, and ignores the possibility that a) the vast majority of people don’t need the warnings at all, and b) the warnings help people prepare/brace for the content, reducing likelihood of a triggering response.
Another thing that bothered me was that the article mentioned people watching the video of Charlie Kirk being shot then being disturbed by it as if the presence or lack of trigger warnings has ANYTHING to do with it. That type of footage has always drawn that sort of attention, warnings or not.
Isn’t that the whole point of trigger warnings? To warn the very few people who could suffer from the content for trauma reasons, i.e. rape victims who don’t want to watch a brutal rape scene where most people wouldn’t be too bothered about?
Let’s get rid of epilepsy warnings too because the „vast majority“ of people don’t have seizures
Vast majority of young adults won’t need most trigger warnings.
Most people ignore them, because they don’t apply to them. People who are likely to be affected by said topics are more likely to look for warnings of said topics.
The point of a trigger warning is to show content to people who want to see it, while shielding people who don’t.
Complaining that “vulnerable groups” don’t utilize them more just sounds like you think of people with mental health issues as children and are mad that they aren’t agreeing to act like it.
I thought trigger warnings were more fo setting expectations anyway. It let’s people mentally prepare for something they my find uncomfortable instead of springing it on them unexpectedly. If someone randomly jabs a needle in your arm unexpectedly, you’d be surprised, annoyed, and possibly either scared or angry or both. Now if that person is a doctor and you are expecting them to give you some medicine they have described to you well, you might be a bit hesitant for normal medical reasons but you are likely prepared mentally and understand what to expect.
In my teens, I was somewhat dismissive of trigger warnings.
Fast forward roughly a decade, and I got PTSD. Triggers: Blood, sharp or pointy stuff being used, suicide.
And that’s when I understood the purpose of those warnings.
One way to think about it is to compare trauma to a fractured bone — except it’s your psyche that is fractured, with those triggers at the center of the break.
In the immediate after math of a bone fracture, the affected limb is immobilized for weeks to months, and one cannot put any force on that joint — using that limb in this state could interfere with healing and exacerbate the condition. Later begins a slow period of recovery through physiotherapy.
The same holds with trauma. Avoidance initially is to bring some amount of feeling of safety, to let the initial shock die down. After this, recovery through talk and exposure-based therapies must be in a controlled environment. Akin to gentle rehab exercises, as opposed to a game of football.
What role do trigger warnings play here? They provide choice.
Not very long ago, I was in a condition where being triggered could ruin not just that day, but possibly the next few days after that. In that situation I could simply not afford the risk. At the same time, being cut off from distractions can exacerbate distress by enhancing rumination even further. I needed (and still need) media.
Even now, trigger warnings remain useful because they let me decide.
Obviously, I am no fool to seek out something like Berserk or Kill Bill. Even so, the proportion of content that can be triggering is surprisingly high. Even just the foreknowledge that the trigger exists can let me be on guard to just steel myself and skip over the troubling bits.
It’s a basic misunderstanding of what trigger warnings are and who their target is. Although most use it for „sensitive“ content, that’s hardly its only or really best use case, and most people won’t fall into any category who would want to avoid that, even people who find it „offensive or disturbing“ aren’t the target of the warning, it’s people who the video would **trigger** some negative reaction for that could actually harm them in various ways. That’s not a common occurrence at all, and the way people use it hardly ever specifies what they warn about, making them useless even for people who would appreciate them. We know what kind of content we’ll see these warnings for so it’s not surprising they will make people curious. But that’s a misuse of these warnings. You didn’t particularly have any other choice before the internet so it made sense then, but on the internet we have many other possibilities.
Let’s consider a specific example, somebody with real arachnophobia (I say real because plenty of people are disgusted by spiders but they won’t be so unreasonably afraid that they could suffer serious harm even by seeing one). To them a trigger warning saying „sensitive content“ on a video won’t be useful even if it was on a video where you’ll see a close-up of a spider unexpectedly, but that’s not where the trigger warning will appear but maybe on a video about a person getting hit by a car, something not even the vast majority of people who need trigger warnings will be affected by, as each person in that group will only be affected by one or a small number of triggers. A perfectly regular video you most definitely won’t see a trigger warning for is what would need it so somebody with real arachnophobia won’t suffer a heart attack as an unexpected close-up of the thing they’re deeply horrified of triggers their flight or fight reflex and floods their body with as much adrenaline as it can possible release.
Of course you can’t account for all the possible triggers, there’s just too many out there and it would be an unreasonable expectation, this way of showing a warning at the beginning of the content is just nonsensical today. For that you need a system that allows content creators to tag the videos accurately, and consumers to filter out everything based on any tag they specify. That doesn’t really exist on social media because those platforms want to push content and they don’t really care about adverse effects on people. It doesn’t really exist on most platforms, really, without using a 3rd party tool where that’s even possible, which pretty much limits the use case to the most common platforms and within desktop browsers, provided that you can even trust the creator of the extension.