Young | For things like this, young people need content warnings: “Caused anxiety”

Social media, eating disorders and war-related violence. These topics came up when Helsingin Sanomat went around the center of Helsinki on Tuesday morning asking young people and young adults about the content warnings they have encountered.

Content warnings are used to warn in advance about content that could potentially shock you. Warnings are generally used for the purpose of helping on social media, but nowadays they are also used, for example, in schools.

HS said in the article published on Tuesday in the story about Kallio high schoolwhere content warnings have become part of everyday teaching.

The first years to become an early childhood education teacher at the University of Helsinki Aliisa Sarres and Venla Pylväinen do not remember encountering content warnings during their own school career. The university has not received any warnings either.

Sometimes warnings could have been useful, they reflected. For example, when climate change was discussed for the first time in middle school or when wars were discussed in lower grades.

“I remember that we were shown Schindler's List and it caused anxiety. But on the other hand, it's also good that things are dealt with”, Pylväinen reflects.

In social According to women, content warnings are received in the media every now and then. Pylvainen remembers seeing warnings in updates dealing with eating disorders and mental health problems, for example.

Sometimes we have also come across footage where the image has been separately censored. This is Instagram's own feature, where the image is blurred and the user is shown a warning text about the sensitivity of the image and the reason for it. The picture can only be seen by clicking separately.

“I've left some content unwatched, even if it was interesting,” says Sarres.

He describes himself as a slightly more sensitive person and says that he knows many people who are very sensitive. That's why it seems important that you can browse content on social media and skip certain content if necessary when you are first warned about it.

Have you ever come across something on social media for which you would have needed content warnings?

“Now that there are a lot of pictures from Gaza, maybe sometimes there is something where there could have been a warning”, Pylväinen reflects.

In the same breath, however, he adds that on the other hand it is good to see and know what is happening.

“It's important to be aware of its reality,” Sarres continues.

To trauma the related vocabulary has changed in recent years, and for example, being triggered has become commonplace and means the awakening of almost any negative feeling. Originally, however, the word referred to the fact that a traumatic event is remembered as triggered by an external factor.

The word is repeated in Kamppi, Helsinki, where Iris Parkkinen waiting for his bus. He says that he sees content warnings especially on Instagram and Tiktok, which is popular with young people. For example, contents related to weight often have the abbreviation SV or CW (content warning).

Iris Parkkinen, who was waiting for the bus in Kampi, says that she came across content warnings, for example, on social media content related to weight. Picture: Ville Maali / HS

“Nowadays there are quite a lot of them. Maybe there shouldn't be some updates, but they can be such that they don't trigger me, but can trigger others.”

“There can be no harm in them,” he sums up.

Content warnings and the consequences of their use have only been studied a little. In the light of the obtained research information however, it appears that their use has no proven positive effects.

“There's no way you can warn about everything in the world. It is not possible to know what might bring back a traumatic experience to the mind of an individual”, PhD in psychology and university lecturer in psychology Samuli Kangaslampi said earlier in an interview with HS.

According to Parkkinen, there were a huge number of content warnings at the time of Corona. Now the warnings have experienced some degree of inflation. At school, he doesn't remember coming across warnings.