Policing Content for Triggers Might Be Missing the Point

It’s your responsibility to manage, not others’ responsibility to remove.

Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

I have strongly mixed feelings about policing other people’s social media content. I certainly see the value of pointing out racist, sexist, or other discriminatory content. It’s important to point this out when we see it, but lately, I’ve been seeing posts asking for compassion in our content based on other people’s triggers.

The recovery community does this often. I’ve seen posts asking people who drink not to post photos or status updates normalizing alcohol consumption, lest it trigger someone recovering from addiction. I recently saw a post asking those who post about fitness not to post related statistics because it could be triggering to those with body image issues or disordered eating. We’ve gone beyond posting trigger warnings about our content and have begun asking people not to post content we could find triggering.

There’s an obvious problem here. We may be missing the point of triggers if we’re asking people to remove content that could hypothetically trigger someone. Knowing our triggers is for us, not for other people. Recovering from trauma or addiction doesn’t mean avoiding triggers for the rest of our lives. Instead, we’re mean to become aware of them and to…