Mental Health In Content Moderation

5 min read

Tech workers are the backbone of the digital economy, ensuring the safety of platforms and training artificial intelligence systems used worldwide. Yet, they remain an exploited and overlooked workforce, enduring harmful working conditions that impact their physical and mental health. As a former Content Moderator for Meta who has experienced the unspeakable traumas of this perilous job first hand, thinking about the job gives me a horrible feeling and numbing flashbacks;a burden compounded when moderating content about one’s own community in crisis.

Like so many Tigryans who were displaced during the Tigray war, I found myself in Kenya shortly after the Tigray genocidal war broke out. I was then hired by Samasource to do content moderation for Facebook in 2021. As a Tigriyan myself, I was overwhelmed to process what was happening.I moderated contents featuring the unspeakable atrocities of the Tigiray genocide. Every shift felt like a nightmare I couldn't wake up from. Imagine starting your day reviewing graphic images of massacres, hate speech targeting your people, and videos depicting unimaginable cruelty. For eight hours a day, five days a week, I had to process this content, knowing it was not just random violence but acts targeting my identity, my family, my home.

It's not so hard to imagine the rippling effects of having to live with a brain that has absorbed and accumulated such contents without a proper therapy, which may result in clouding and affecting  the normal thinking abilities of those in the field among many other psychological issues. Yet, our work is often invisible, our contributions undervalued, and our well being overlooked. 

Complex Trauma 

Any one who did Content moderation is prone to experience PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and GAD ( Generalized Anxiety Disorder) as a result of being exposed to hundreds of thousands of toxic, negative images and videos of gruesome, pornographic, suicidal,self harm and various abusive, violent and hateful words and acts against humans and animals for several hours,years. Data workers are exposed to such contents in their role to keep the Social Media platform free of harm for users and also training Artificial Intelligence systems in that process.

“I miss the day I could be normal again. I miss the day I could go out and socialize with my friends and my community again,I wish my family understood what I'm going through”  this is a common statement you’d hear from almost all the Facebook ex-content moderators in Kenya. Everyone anticipates for the day that they would return to their normal state of mind and join their community. But these hopes seem to be far from being attained currently as immediate therapy is not accessible for the workers. 

For Tigriyan moderators, the trauma was layered- not only were we exposed to horrific violence, but many of us were displaced refugees, separated from our families and uncertain about their safety. I spent months moderating videos of bombings and massacres, wondering if my parents had survived. 

Generally speaking, the issue of mental health in Content Moderation is a very layered and very complex topic.The job is not only damaging and torturous to one’s mental health, it also has a profound long term risk for the worker’s psychological and therefore physical wellbeing. 

The psychological scar from this job is daunting. Many marriages have failed, mental disorder issues spiked, suicidal ideation, self isolation and social anxiety and depression has become the reality one can not run away from easily. The lives of so many youth are in crisis as they become addicted to pharmaceuticals,non pharmaceutical drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism from their distress. People often misattribute behaviors like drug use or alcohol use as lack of capability to stop but often in the case of the moderators it’s a trauma response. 

For most of the ex-content moderators,feelings of shame and victimhood that arises from facing the fact that they’ve been exploited, used and disposed of with severe mental disorder is not a happy place to be in. The fact that the companies could have prevented or ease such damages on workers but showed negligence and greed when it comes to providing proper mental health care, better working conditions and knowingly exposing them to such dangerous jobs is unsettling. Most of the issues the workers face could have been resolved if they got treatment on site in a timely manner.

During the time I worked as a content moderator I always felt like I was living my life upside down. Sometimes I get lost for words to describe what I went through. For the most part I was shell shocked from watching countless graphic videos for hours. My mind is clouded and scattered with such images and videos that I always avoid,try to run away from but all in vain. I experience episodes of panic attacks, rollercoasters of unprocessed emotions, profound sadness and grief on a daily basis. I’m forever haunted by the countless corpses that I’ve watched. 

Every now and then, I’ve experienced having strange and terrifying thoughts that I could not even put to words. I’m scared of my own thoughts. I couldn’t do anything about these strange dark thoughts and as time went by I became numb and paralyzed while I was in the face of important life changes or milestones.

Denial, detachment and avoidance became my chosen coping mechanism, my attempt to bury the overwhelming emotions. The bottled up emotions that were left unexpressed are manifesting in my daily life as anger and frustration. I look forward to the day that I will finally go to see a therapist. I had a mental breakdown very recently which led me to shave my head bald. It happened instantaneously after I started taking anti anxiety medications.Those who don't experience what I went through would think I was being dramatic but I wouldn’t wish them to experience half of the trauma I've endured during the time I worked as a content moderator. Moreover, there are worse bad experiences from my colleagues where we’ve witnessed instances of suicide attempt and drug overdose among others.

Workers suffer from a myriad of mental, physical and social problems as a result of the job, for instance I once witnessed a fellow moderator openly confess that he couldn’t go any longer. His daily exposure to violence and hate had made life unbearable, and we later learned he had attempted suicide.

Many of us have gone through a psychological evaluation. However, we found the evaluation report to be so heartbreaking to accept. Nobody wants to accept that they’ve developed serious mental health issues. Most of us were prescribed anti-depressant and anti- anxiety medications to ease our conditions. However, the medication it self has a side effect that can cause suicidal ideation and any other health complications.The only way we could heal from our trauma and night terrors is to see a psychotherapist regularly but that is impossible given the high cost of psychotherapy and psychological care as the company did not provide any therapy and since many former moderators were fired, they have not been able to get other jobs and hence could not afford therapy. All of these traumatic contents we absorbed as moderators could have been prevented or eased if the company provided a proper psychologist on site but unfortunately now the contents are buried in our deepest memories. And sadly, we can’t reverse the effects of this job or unsee or unhear what we’ve consumed for years. Clear and healthy thinking is hard to imagine.

Many studies show that recovery and healing from PTSD and GAD can take several years. It is often very challenging for us Content Moderators to integrate ourselves into the normal population as we often may face stigma and misunderstanding from our family and peers.