Warning: the content
of this blog post is more adult than teen.
We young adult authors put a whole lot of thinking (or we
should) into what we put on the page. We feel a certain responsibility - as
parents, teachers, librarians, former teens - to make sense of the world for
our readers, not to make life more difficult for them. And certainly we don't
want to throw anyone into PTSD hell.
So along come two new ideas/studies that have me churning
about what I might write next and whether I will inadvertently light up a young
reader's brain with a post-traumatic stress reflex.
Trigger warnings (see this article in The New Yorker) are flags that the material about to be
read (or studied in the classroom or viewed on the screen) may trigger a
post-traumatic response to memories that are evoked by the material. Huckleberry
Finn would come with a trigger warning for those who have experienced racism;
Taxi Driver would come with a trigger
warning for those who have experienced sexual assault; Game of Thrones
would come with a trigger warning for those who have experienced...just about
any negative horror you can imagine, and some you don't want to.
My first thought upon hearing about trigger warnings was,
"Oh, for pity's sake." How would a teacher teach anything, even
things in the canon, without a trigger warning? Shakespeare alone would merit
multiple warnings about violence, misogyny, anti-Semitism. And forget the
bloody Greeks: certain bits of The Iliad
might ruin anyone's day.
Now new studies have determined that brain development
in teens is not steady-state (golly, what a surprise.) The amygdala, that part
of the brain that processes fear, develops earlier than the prefrontal cortex,
which regulates reason (i.e., processes overcoming fear.) If you've ever
wondered why so many of us get stuck reliving the dreadful anxieties that were
born in high school, now there's a scientific reason why. Our brains keep trying to process the fear and anxiety that were brought on by those teenage experiences,
even well after we are able to process newer fears and anxieties.
I find this newest brain research raising a level of
concern, for me, that the experiences of adolescence that adults dismiss as
trivial or advise as character-building may in fact be setting up kids for
years of adult therapy.
I am not advocating sheltering young people from the bumps
and bruises of life. Indeed, to a certain degree, resiliency is born of the
ability to weather downturns and is necessary to achieving success. Furthermore,
I do firmly believe that when teens are coping with a stressful situations -
and even situations that are filled with horror - one of the best coping
mechanisms is reading about it in the safety of one's home, room, school,
library. Just look at what Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak has
accomplished in terms of raising awareness and giving voice to the victims of
rape.
One of my works in progress is a contemporary YA novel and addresses a brutal attack on
someone who has come out of the closet. Should it come with a trigger warning
for those who've experienced abuse because of their sexual orientation?
I wonder whether you'd like to weigh in on this issue. What
do you think about trigger warnings? What about this new brain research, and
the vulnerability of teens to fear and anxiety? I'd really like to hear your
opinions.
