If you've ever had trauma, especially recent, you'll appreciate well done content warnings. You don't want the dramatic plot twist to happen to be exactly the topic you've been trying to avoid so that you can slowly get better.

If you've experienced a certain kind of trauma, it's not a matter willpower. It involves a loss of control over one's emotional response and thoughts which can be triggered by things that relate to your trauma.

Don't knock on content warnings just because they lack rigorous evidence or because "trigger warnings" became the butt of jokes for a while. They have a genuine utility.

I've seen evidence that reading a trigger warning and then consuming the content might be worse than just consuming the content without a trigger warning.

But is there any good reason to doubt that trigger warnings can be helpful in the obvious way: someone sees the trigger warning and makes an informed decision to avoid the content?

Trigger warnings are not there for some scientific effect. I view them as courtesy for consumers to have an chance to opt out of possibly unwanted experiences beforehand.

I think its reasonable to know what you are getting into before you buy.

E.g. if i'm planning family movie night, i probably don't want an R movie. There is nothing wrong with R movies its just sometimes not what I'm looking for. Its nice to be able to see at a glance if the product is what i am looking for. Its really not that different than labelling something as sci-fi or rom-com, etc.

can you please cite some sources for your claims?

Please elaborate.