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Recent Research Shows That Young People are Anxious About Climate Change; What Can We Do?

We have to acknowledge that the idea of our changing climate and the warming of our planet might be scary for our students, for their parents, and for those of us who teach too. A study conducted in the United Kingdom in 2020 surveyed more than 500 young people ages 16 to 24. The researchers found that 37 percent of the respondents were anxious about the Covid-19 pandemic, and 52 percent were anxious about the lack of action on climate change.

According to the report released by Imperial College London, the researchers also measured the respondents' sense of agency, a psychological term used to describe the extent to which someone feels able to influence the course of events by one's actions. The researchers asked young people about their awareness of the actions they could take in response to climate change, their ability to make changes, and their sense of responsibility to act.

“Young people felt more guilty about their own contributions to climate change than the COVID-19 pandemic, less capable of acting on climate change, and less sure their actions around climate change would have an effect. The researchers say this highlights the need for clear information in this area that doesn't place responsibility solely on individuals while highlighting where actions can make a difference,” the report said.

“Our study emphasizes the importance of leaders taking urgent action on the climate emergency, and doing so in a way that meaningfully listens to the concerns and desires of young people,” said Dr. Emma Lawrance, a clinical neuroscientist at the university and the lead policy fellow for mental health for the Institute of Global Health Innovation. “Climate education and mental health support, for example, must help young people cope with the compounding stressors they face while enabling appropriate opportunities for action.”

A larger global study, reported in the science journal Nature, showed that anxiety about climate change is affecting young people throughout the world. This study, conducted by two researchers at the University of Bath, in England, and colleagues at six other institutions in Helsinki, California, New York, Massachusetts, and the UK asked 10,000 young people ages 16 to 25 in 10 countries about their thoughts and feelings about climate change and how governments have responded.

The researchers found that eco-anxiety is widespread. Nearly 60 percent of respondents reported being “very or extremely worried” about climate change and 84 percent reported being “at least moderately worried.” More than 50 percent said they felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty. More than 45% said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their functioning in daily life.

“Respondents rated the governmental response to climate change negatively and reported greater feelings of betrayal than of reassurance. Correlations indicated that climate anxiety and distress were significantly related to perceived inadequate government response and associated feelings of betrayal,” according to the researchers.

The researchers interpreted these findings by saying that “climate change and inadequate governmental responses are associated with climate anxiety and distress in many children and young people globally. These psychological stressors threaten health and well-being and could be construed as morally injurious and unjust. There is an urgent need for increases in both research and government responsiveness.”

Just this past October, the Education Week Research Center conducted a national survey of U.S. teenagers ages 14 to 18, and 37 percent of respondents reported feeling anxious about climate change, 34 percent said they were afraid, and 30 percent felt helpless. Only 17 percent said they were optimistic, and only 8 percent reported being unconcerned about climate change.

Madeline Will, a staff writer for EdWeek, explained that the term climate anxiety encompasses anxiety, fear, sadness, grief, anger, helplessness, powerlessness, and guilt, all the difficult emotions that young people (and others) can experience when confronting the climate crisis.

While climate anxiety is present in people of all ages, it’s most prevalent among young adults, according to Britt Wray, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University and the author of a new book on the topic, Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in the Climate Crisis. Wray said she has seen climate anxiety in high schoolers, middle schoolers, and even in children as young as eight. Are school counselors and teachers prepared to help students emotionally deal with the climate crisis? Probably not.

“This is an existential human crisis that I think teachers are not prepared to address,” said Chelsey Goddard, a vice president at the Education Development Center, who leads the global nonprofit’s health, mental health, and behavioral health work in the United States.

Not all children are anxious about climate change. "I have to remind them to put their single-use plastic water bottles into the recycling bin," said Brenda K. Dalessandro, a teacher of third-graders at Castlehill Country Day School, in Tucson, AZ. She says science class for her students, ages eight and nine, focuses on more basic topics at this time. "Now our fifth graders, they are more aware of environmental issues." She noted that one fifth-grade student did her science fair project this academic year on issues surrounding the cleanup of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

So what are educators like us to do? How can we help our young students learn about climate change and grapple with the emotional toll the climate crisis is causing for many, and how can we help them feel empowered to encourage societal change? I hope to explore this important issue and related topics regularly through this blog.

AMD