Abstract
Eco-anxiety refers to negative feelings around climate change, associated with distress and concern about the future. As there are minimal data on eco-anxiety in pre-adolescent children, here, we measured worries, knowledge and commitment to action in primary school-aged children in East London, an area characterised by high child poverty levels and ethnic diversity. Approximately half of the children worry about and are aware of global warming. We also found a correlation between worries and knowledge, and between worries and taking action. While these data are limited by a cross-sectional design and by the use of single-item self-reports of these constructs, nonetheless, greater engagement of pre-adolescent children in discussions around climate change is called for.
Keywords: Psychology, Child Psychiatry, Child Health
The 2023 UK Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health report highlighted increasing eco-anxiety in children and young people1 . Consistent with an earlier scoping review,2 the report also suggested that a significant number of adolescents and young adults (30%–49%) were very worried about the state of the planet3 4 . There are fewer quantitative estimates of the rates of eco-anxiety in primary school-aged children (<11 years). In Canada and Taiwan, 10- to 11-year-old children expressed high levels of worry about environmental issues such as ‘extinction of animals and plants’ and ‘air pollution’,5 and 82% of American 10- to 12-year-olds expressed environmental concern, with 72% reporting pessimistic views of the future state of Earth.6
In middle childhood, children begin to learn to cope with and manage worries.7 One way to cope with climate worries may be to increase understanding of the problem and take environmental action. Here, we explored levels of worry, knowledge and action in 8- to 12-year-old primary-school children in London.
Data were collected as part of the East-London school-based observational cohort study Development of Emotional Resilience (https://osf.io/q5wyt/), wave 2 (February–November 2024), whereby 772 children (table 1) reported on their climate-related worries using tablets in school visits.
Table 1. Participant demographic characteristics.
| N | Percentage of responses | |
|---|---|---|
| Sex | 772 | |
| Male | 373 | 49 |
| Female | 396 | 51 |
| Age (years) | 772 | |
| 8 | 37 | 5 |
| 9 | 222 | 29 |
| 10 | 285 | 37 |
| 11 | 216 | 28 |
| 12 | 4 | 1 |
| Ethnicity categories | 772 | |
| Asian/Asian British | 473 | 62 |
| Black/Black British | 63 | 9 |
| White | 138 | 18 |
| Other | 89 | 11 |
As there are few validated measures for youth eco-anxiety, especially among primary school-aged children, we used four questions adapted from Boyes and colleagues8 to assess eco-anxiety and global warming knowledge/action (table 2). This questionnaire aims to understand young people’s views of climate change, their willingness to act and has been validated with secondary school children (aged 12–16 years old) in Australia.8
Table 2. Questions and frequencies of responses.
| Measure | Question | Response | Percentages of responses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Global warming worry and knowledge | How worried are you about what global warming might do to the environment? | I am very worried | 16 |
| I am quite worried | 26 | ||
| I am a little bit worried | 40 | ||
| I am not worried at all | 18 | ||
| How much do you think you know about global warming? | I know a lot about global warming | 21 | |
| I know something about global warming | 35 | ||
| I know a little about global warming | 30 | ||
| I know almost nothing about global warming | 14 | ||
| How ‘environmentally friendly’ do you think you are? (How much do you think you ‘take care of’ the environment by the things you do?) | I am very environmentally friendly | 30 | |
| I am quite environmentally friendly | 50 | ||
| I am a bit environmentally friendly | 17 | ||
| I am not at all environmentally friendly | 3 | ||
| Do you think that global warming is happening now? | I am sure global warming is happening | 39 | |
| I think global warming is happening | 24 | ||
| I don’t know whether global warming is happening or not | 29 | ||
| I am sure global warming is not happening | 8 |
Patient and public involvement, Informal feedback from children in wave 1 led to the inclusion of questions relating to global events in wave 2. We subsequently analysed and interpreted this data with two young people as coauthors (KP is a young adult; CR is a 10-year-old child).
Fourty two percent of children said they were very/quite worried about global warming. Worry level did not significantly differ by age (r=−0.02, p=0.5), gender (W=70 683, p=0.34) or socioeconomic status (W=58 308, p=0.06). Analysis of variance results showed some differences between ethnicity categories in climate anxiety (F(3,759)=3.23, p=0.02, η2=0.01). Post-hoc tests showed that children from white backgrounds reported marginally significantly higher climate worry (M=3.20) compared with the Asian/Asian British (M=3.05) and Other ethnic groups (M=3.05, both p=0.04), all other comparisons were not significant.
Twenty one percent said they knew a lot about global warming; 30% said they were environmentally friendly. Higher eco-anxiety was significantly linked to more knowledge (r=0.30, p<0.001), belief that climate change is happening (r=0.30, p<0.001) and action (r=0.09, p=0.01). Moreover, knowledge and action were also significantly correlated (r=0.12, p<0.001).
Compared with adolescents, where 55% reported high eco-anxiety,9 fewer primary school-aged children were very/quite worried (42%). Speculatively, these differences could reflect broader age trends in the content of fears across development—where children worry more about immediate, concrete and prepotent stimuli, that are largely non-cognitive, and adolescents’ worries are related to anticipatory, abstract, and more global stimuli and events. Moreover, it may also be the case that adolescents are more knowledgeable about climate change and thus would have greater eco-anxiety. Those from white backgrounds reported marginally higher levels of worry than children in other ethnic groups. If replicated in other UK cohorts, more work is needed to understand the potential sources of children’s eco-worry and whether differences in exposure to these sources explain differences between ethnic groups in children. However, there may be other factors influencing this relationship that should be explored in greater depth in future studies.
Children with more environmental awareness reported greater worry, aligning with work that suggests that researching information on climate change is associated with greater worry.10 Despite the emotional and psychological cost of this knowledge, both our young coauthors (KP, CR) said it is important to learn more about the climate crisis and receive guidance on how they can make a difference. The UK 2022 Education Act requires schools to teach climate change across subjects and to give practical opportunities for pupils to learn about climate resilience, carbon impact and enhancing biodiversity with the hope that they will transfer this knowledge into their communities. It is too soon, and there are too few data to assess whether this act has impacted literacy around climate change or eco-anxiety. Research also suggests that television is one of the most prominent sources of climate change information,5 11 but children have also stated that they would like to learn more through parents/families on this global crisis.1
Our study has several limitations. First, children reported their levels of knowledge and environmental actions using single items on a measure that has not been validated for this age group. Future studies may consider taking objective metrics of literacy and action, too. Second, data are cross-sectional, so it remains to be seen whether it is climate knowledge predicting worries and/or worries predicting action. Third, our sample is from East London, an area of high child poverty but also increased ethnic diversity that does not reflect the wider UK context.
Regardless, our findings add to the limited literature on eco-anxiety in children. Our findings pose the question of when children should be educated about climate change and by whom to reduce its impact on the environment, but not cause significant levels of anxiety. We should harness eco-anxiety to prompt children to take tangible environmental actions.
Footnotes
Funding: This research was supported by the Barts Charity, UK (charity number: 212563, project code: MRC&U0042). The funders had no role in the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, in writing of the manuscript or in the decision to submit for publication.
Patient consent for publication: Consent obtained from parent(s)/guardian(s).
Ethics approval: This study involves human participants. The study was granted ethical approval from the Queen Mary University Ethics Board (QMERC22.251). Parents provided consent and children assent.
Provenance and peer review: Part of a Topic Collection; Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Patient and public involvement: Patients and/or the public were involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research. Refer to the Methods section for further details.
Data availability statement
Fully anonymised data arising from the study and any other study materials will be available on reasonable request from the study principal investigators (j.lau@qmul.ac.uk and d.ougrin@qmul.ac.uk) governed by a signed data sharing agreement after the publication of the findings of the study by the research team.
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