Three Reasons to Forego Trigger Warnings

Abstract

Trigger warnings—alerts advising people about the negative nature of the material to follow and possible adverse reactions to it—are now commonplace. But their use on campuses remains controversial. A growing body of work on the effects of trigger warnings, including the work by Kimble and colleagues (Human Arenas, 2023), suggests that students do not need trigger warnings and demonstrates at least three ways in which trigger warnings do not have their intended effects. First, people rarely use the warnings to avoid negative material. Second, people report the same degree of distress about negative material whether or not they received a warning. Third, the warnings by themselves can lead people to feel distressed. In other words, trigger warnings are not merely unhelpful; they are harmful in ways not intended. For these three reasons, college instructors should forego the use of trigger warnings.