Eco anxiety podcast

This podcast episode discusses the concept of eco-anxiety and its impact on children and teenagers. Eco-anxiety refers to extreme worry about the environment and climate change caused by human activity. Studies show that many young people feel powerless and anxious about climate change, expressing emotions such as sadness, guilt, frustration, and anger. It is disheartening to hear that children as young as 10 years old have pessimistic views about the future of the planet. Interviews with an 18-year-old and an 11-year-old confirm these findings. The interviewees believe that schools should start conversations about climate change and provide more information on how to get involved. They suggest that giving children a platform to participate can help alleviate their anxiety. It is important for parents and adults to continue the conversation at home. The example of Greta Thunberg and her organization Fridays for Future shows that young people's voices are important in addressing climate Hi, guys. Welcome back to the Climate Change Podcast. I'm your host, Natalie Ukovian. Last week, we covered what climate change is. This week, we're going to be talking about eco-anxiety and the effect it has on kids. In case you missed last week's episode, I'll give a quick little overview of what we covered. We all know the words climate change. It might even make you a little bit scared. When you look up climate change online, it is described as long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. To us, most likely, we think of those scary forest fires in Australia, changes in the weather, and the effects on the earth. All very scary and overwhelming thoughts. This week, we're going to do a deep dive on how climate change is impacting children and teenagers' mental health. Let's get started. What is eco-anxiety, you might ask? Well, according to the dictionary, eco-anxiety can be described as having extreme worry about current and future harm to the environment caused by human activity and climate change. When you look at all that has happened throughout the past four years with our earth and the relationship it all has with climate change, it's no wonder more and more people find themselves dealing with climate anxiety. According to a source, it is said that in a group of kids ranging from 14 to 18, the majority of this group feel powerless and feel that the climate change situation is out of control. Those in this group are also more likely to experience feelings of anxiety, sadness, guilt, frustration, and anger. In another study that consisted of 50 children ranging from the ages of 10 to 12, it was found that these children were expressing pessimistic feelings about the future of the planet. These studies make me and everyone else I have shared these results with very disheartened to hear. I wanted to get more information so I decided to interview my roommate who is 18 and my cousin who is 11 to see how they felt about climate change. What I found from interviewing them was that their results are very similar to the study. When I asked my roommate, she started to tell me how when she thinks about climate change it really scares her. As she put it, climate change is insanely overwhelming and I feel like there is nothing too big I can do to correct what has been done. Yes, I recycle and do all the little things I read about and that are recommended, but still I feel like it is not enough to actually make a change if such a little amount of people in the world are doing it. I asked her what she thinks would help raise awareness in the climate change and the effects it's having on her mental health as well as other kids and she said, I think schools should start to start the conversation. I think it's important to get through to the younger generation about how important it is to help the earth. I also think more information on how to get involved should be talked about because many people don't have the correct amount of information to get involved. I believe that if children are given the platform to get involved, it could seriously help them with the anxiety that they're facing when it comes to climate change. When I asked my cousin about how he feels about climate change, he told me he doesn't know much about climate change, just that it's really bad. He didn't seem to want to talk about it too much. I asked him what emotions he feels when he thinks about it. He told me it makes him sad and scared. Based off of both these interviews and the previously mentioned information about mental health effects, climate change is causing in children and teens, something has to be done. From all the research I have done on this topic, I do not believe eco-anxiety is studied enough, especially when speaking about the effects it is having on children. Children are faced with many other stressful factors in their lives, so this is something more attention should be brought to. What can we do about this, you might ask. As my roommate said, schools should be talking about climate change and providing safe spaces to go to so that kids who are experiencing eco-anxiety can talk in a safe space. It's extremely important to talk about climate change while also keeping the seriousness of it. It's also important to follow this up with ways to get involved. I also think it could be very beneficial to continue the conversation at home with parents or a trusted adult. A great example to look up to is Greta Thunberg. She created her organization Fridays for Future to provide protests and marches every Friday to voice how important it is to take care of the environment. Greta is only 21 years old and started her fight at an even younger age. She shows kids that if you're very worried about climate change, there are ways to get involved and your voice is very important. By providing a platform for youth to express their voice, she acts as an amazing role model. That's all we've got this week for eco-anxiety. Thanks for tuning in today, guys. See you next week.