"The future is frightening", 75 percent of young people voiced in the largest scientific study on climate-related anxiety among youth conducted to date, while as many as 40 percent were unsure whether they should have children as a direct result of impending climate catastrophes.
The study asked over 10,000 youngsters, aged 16 to 25, about their attitudes toward climate change and its effects. They came from all corners of the globe, from Australia, the Philippines, and India to Nigeria, Finland, France, Great Britain, the United States, and Brazil, showing that no place remains unaffected.
This study, which some are already dubbing the most important research on the topic to date, sends a very clear — and very worrying — message. Greta Thunberg may be the most influential young climate activist on the planet today, but the gifted and passionate youngster's cries that global political leaders are crushing all hope with a constant barrage of "blah, blah, blah" may seem to be extreme to most parents of children in this age group.
What Did the Study on Climate Anxiety Among Global Youth Reveal?
The study of around 10,000 young people aged between 16 and 25 was titled Young People's Voices on Climate Anxiety, Government Betrayal and Moral Injury: A Global Phenomenon and published in The Lancet Planetary Health. Its authors noted that children and adolescents are in a unique position. Today's youth is the first generation to experience the widespread effects of human-driven climate change through extreme weather events such as wildfires, floods, droughts, extreme heat, and water shortages. Yet, as a result of their youth, they lack opportunities to take real action.
With — truly alarming, but science-backed — messages that we're about to reach a tipping point, beyond which the potential to minimize suffering among humans and other lifeforms alike essentially disappears being all over the news, how is young people's mental health impacted?
The study found that:
- Fifty-nine percent of young people aged 16 to 25 were very worried about the future as a result of climate change, while 84 percent were at a minimum "moderately" concerned.
- Over half of the study participants reported feeling "sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty" about climate change.
- Around 45 percent of the young people who participated in the study admitted that negative thoughts about climate change had a detrimental impact on their every day quality of life. This number relates solely to mental health, as opposed to practical implications such as not being able to study well due to heat.
- Around 40 percent felt worried about the prospect of having children in the future, in the context of concerns that climate change may render their quality of life too low.
They aren't wrong.
Nobody can claim that these climate fears are irrational, something to be remedied in cognitive behavioral therapy or to be medicated.
A recent UNICEF report, titled The Climate Crisis is a Child Rights Crisis, already indicated that 2.2 children across the globe are facing "extremely high" risks of experiencing, directly, in their daily lives and their communities, the effects of climate change. Nearly every child is at risk of experiencing at least one type of climate change-related extreme weather event, whether it be a hurricane, heatwave, drought, flood, wildfire, or other event.
These events are not just blips on the radar. They devastate entire communities, cost lives, and increasingly lead to displacement.
How to Talk to Children About Climate Change?
Given the fact that climate education is on the curricular agenda in far too few countries thus far — bureaucracies, like educational departments, move far slower than climate change — and that it's hard to believe that very many parents intentionally go around scaring their kids about the dystopian future that may await them, it's clear that our young people are getting their information from the news.
Just how do we discuss this scary topic with our children?
Experts advise that parents:
- Keep the discussion factually accurate but also age-appropriate.
- Don't make the situation sound more optimistic than it actually is, but focus on the positive steps we can and must all take to mitigate climate change.
- Teach their kids coping mechanisms to deal with their anxiety. Even if the anxiety is well-placed, we still need to deal with it to have a better quality of life.
- Keep talking, and asking questions to find out what your children already know.
- Make positive changes in your own household, showing that activism starts at home. Taking action alleviates worries, as well.