A probe found during the course of a week, young people came across the disclaimers on social media dozens of times about distressing material
Trigger warnings about offensive content actually make people want to watch it more, boffins claim.
A probe found during the course of a week, young people came across the disclaimers on social media dozens of times about distressing material.
It included blurred images or video that they had to consent to see.
The study found of the 261 volunteers, nearly 90% still watched it and some said they were more likely to because of the warning.
And those who reported suffering from trauma were no less likely to click.
One told researchers: “Sometimes my brain wants to be triggered, so it grabs my attention more.”
Victoria Bridgland, from Flinders University in Australia, said she wasn’t surprised by her findings.
She said: “Trigger warnings don’t really change people’s behaviours or emotions at all.
“I’m quite certain that the warnings don’t emotionally prepare people.
“The problem with most trigger warnings in the studies that we’ve done so far is that most of the time, in practice, trigger warnings are quite vague, and so they create curiosity.
“What’s the utility of sharing a beheading video, for instance? It’s not going to raise awareness more than telling people a beheading happens, but it’ll get clicks.
“So they put a warning on it, to be like, ‘We warned you, if you’re going to watch the graphic content and be disturbed by it, that’s on you’.
“But they’re going to show you this graphic stuff because they know it’s going to get clicks.”
The study also found that just 10% of participants said they always avoided material marked by a warning.
Bridgland added: “Trigger warnings are there to put the onus back on the consumer.”
The research was published in the Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
It comes after it emerged some James Bond films uploaded to Amazon Prime Video have trigger alerts added at the start.
The first 007 flick, Dr No, carries a viewer advisory of “violence, alcohol use, smoking, and foul language”.
#Trigger #warnings #offensive #content #people #watch
