Are Young People Facing an Eco-Anxiety Epidemic?
Are Young People Facing an Eco-Anxiety Epidemic?
Climate Activism and How Eco-Anxiety is Linked to it? By Dila K
A climate activist is a person who actively campaigns to have issues of climate change recognized and addressed. Climate activists are involved with climate change and they have to deal with lots of bad news so it is hard for them not to develop eco-anxiety.
Eco anxiety refers to a fear of ecological disaster and people aged 15-25 are increasingly suffering from this mental health related problem. Especially climate activists and young scientists who follow the news and focus on statistics that show negative trends, they then develop anxiety over ecological disasters and their future.
Statistics
A new survey of eco-anxiety, published in September 2021 questioned young people from 10 countries, and 10.000 young people opened up about their concerns. The countries were the U.K., the United States, Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Portugal. The survey shows that 75% of teenagers and young people stress over the climate crisis. Even though not all of these people are scientists or activists, they come across lots of news that makes them worry. More than 50% of survey respondents said they felt “Sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty.” about climate change. About half of these people said that their worries about climate change affected their daily lives.Overall, 75% of young respondents said, “The future is frightening.”In more affected countries, the percentage was even higher. For example, in the Philippines, 92%,and in Portugal, it was 81%.
Scientists and climate activists have been warning world leaders about climate change for so long,but unfortunately they can never get anything done because the leaders took so long to respond and they still refuse to take action. This is the main reason why young people develop eco-anxiety, of course with other factors too.
What's the impact?
Half of the people who joined the survey also said that eco-anxiety affected their daily lives. These effects can be sleep problems, headaches, concentration loss, and even physical health problems if you’re worrying too much. If eco-anxiety concerns you so much that you can’t stop thinking about it, you should take a break from checking the news, and try to take a break from reading about environmental issues.
We also interviewed two students in Waldegrave School for Girls, Year 9. They have said that they feel “anxious and scared of their future.” and that they were aware that the climate crisis is already affecting people's lives.
In conclusion, we can say that young people aged about 15-25 develop eco-anxiety and their worries affect their daily lives. They have a feeling of betrayal from their governments who refuse to take action. They want scientist’s and youth voices to be heard, that way they can hope that something will change. The Impact of eco-anxiety is all around them and they are trying to cope with it while the climate crisis is on the rise.