This is not a decision made with ease. Content warning were initially added with the intent of helping readers decide whether or not they were interested given the material, but research on the topic has shown time and again that the effects have not been as intended.
Recent research by Association for Psychological Science, as reported by Science Daily, has shown that content warnings can unintentionally increase anticipatory anxiety, which occurs when readers brace for discomfort before encountering sensitive material. A comprehensive meta-analysis in peer-reviewed Sage Journals found that participants who read content warnings were more anxious before engaging with potentially triggering content, while the warnings did not alleviate distress once the material was consumed. The findings show that warnings may not achieve their intended purpose of helping readers manage their reactions to difficult topics, and might even enhance curiosity, leading to increased engagement rather than avoidance.
The Atlantic has explored similar dynamics in discussions about anxiety, emphasizing that efforts to shield people from distress can inadvertently magnify their fears. By emphasizing avoidance over resilience, such warnings can undermine individuals’ capacity to handle discomfort.
Article after article after article, the data remains the same—the effect isn’t as intended. It’s not giving people a moment to collect themselves before proceeding. It’s leading instead to anticipatory anxiety, and either drawing engagement by those who the warnings were for, or leading to avoidance. Ironic, is it not, that warnings either serve to attract people or to avoidance when the intended purpose was to give a reader a chance to take a breath first, and that even that take-a-breath moment leads to a lot more stress?
This made me stop and think about my own history (Noëlle writing, here). I have trauma around gun violence. Frankly, I saw brains get shot out right after the gun was aimed at me by my father. Ironically, “trigger warning” includes a trigger for those with gun violence trauma. I also have trauma around alcoholism. My mother was incredibly abusive. She pulled the trigger on me thinking the shotgun was loaded. Quite the dubious honor, surviving both parents aiming guns at me… I really don’t want to get into details since it is still hard sometimes. But the Seven Fishes episode of The Bear, which I was warned would contain a scene involving an alcoholic mother, filled me with so much anxiety that I almost stopped watching. Then the scene was so mellow compared to my experiences that I didn’t realize when I was watching the scene in question. I kept watching and waiting for what didn’t happen. I couldn’t deny the anticipatory stress.
Our content warnings were made with the best of intentions, but it’s gotten harder and harder to deny that the evidence keeps showing that it’s a net negative. They’re harming more people than they help. In light of this evidence, we’ve decided to remove content warnings from these books. To be clear, we will never get behind Colleen Hoover’s way of thinking, which is that it’s no biggie if a writer doesn’t want a reader to have any idea at all about the subject matter in a book. Her method of having blurbs that sound like romcoms on purpose, then have surprise-beatings is absolutely not acceptable. This is deliberately misleading people. If you’re in the mood for a silly romance after a stressful week, you shouldn’t be served a story about abuse or murder or other serious topics.
Instead, we will focus on rewriting blurbs to offer more accurate insights into each book’s themes and tone, and trusting readers to make informed choices based on context, rather than warnings. The new blurb for Shattered Glass: The Starling clearly states that Grace goes to New York as a naïve dreamer who ends under undercover in a brothel and in the middle of a mafia war, with one don selling children, stated in those words. It’s also plainly stated that Grace discovers devastating secrets about her past, in those words, as well as her family having dark secrets. We can either have content warnings, or we can trust our readers to read the blurb and understand that there will be an innocent woman who ends up in a place with sex workers, a combination will be hard for her, that there is someone who does traffics children, and that there will be family drama. We choose to trust readers, and to write blurbs that give info with some degree of context for readers to use in their decision-making.
The decision to make this chance hasn’t been easy, not when our warnings were started with the best of intentions. Some readers may be angry at this change. If a reader reaches out asking for a specific list, we will gladly oblige. But given the overall evidence, this change is beneficial in the end, and should help more than a specific list of warnings.