Eco-Anxiety

Maybe  if you see a video of disaster like floods in Sumatra, wildfires destroying forest in Kalimantan, and maybe there are headlines warning about rising sea level threatening Jakarta. Inside your self you feel helpless, if you experienced this you are not overreacting, what you are feeling has a name, its called eco-anxiety. Eco-anxiety also called ecological anxiety or climate anxiety chronic fear about the future of the planet and the damage being done to it. The American Psychological Association (APA) formally defines it as a chronic fear of environmental doom, a deep worry that the Earth is heading to destruction. The feeling is more widespread than most people realize. A study published in The Lancet Planetary Health in 2021 they surveyed more than 10,000 young people aged 16 to 25 across ten countries and found that nearly 60% reported feeling very or extremely worried about climate change issues. Over than 45% said that their feelings negatively affected their daily functioning, including eating, sleeping, and concentrating at school. An overwhelming 83% believed that adult had failed to take care of the planet.

Source: Hickman et al. (2021), The Lancet Planetary Health.

Eco-anxiety hits young people harder than other age groups and there are very clear reasons for this. First one, the brain is still developing, according to Dr. Fransiska Kaligis, a child and adolescent psychiatrist from Universitas Indonesia, the human brain particularly the parts responsible for emotional regulation and decision making is still maturing until around age 24. It means young people are more emotionally reactive to distressing news, and less equipped to process it in a healthy way. Second one, social media amplify the problem, the youth of Indonesia spend a big amount of their time on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X (previously called Twitter). These platforms are driven by engagement algorithm that tend to push the most alarming and emotional content, teenager maybe see many videos about climate disaster in a when they are scrolling in hteir phone in the night before going to bed. This kind of negative information is difficult to process, and sometimes leading to emotional response like fear, anger, guilt, and desparate rather than constructive action. Third one, it feels deeply personal and unfair, many young people feel that they are inheriting a damage planet one that they did not break. Climate change was largely caused by industrialization and consumption pattern that happened before their generation was even born. This sense of injustice fueling eco-anxiety and turning it into not just fear, but also grief and rage, but the good news is that eco-anxiety does not have to be paralyzing, it could become powerful fuel to ignite the youth to make some changes. Like The Climate Reality Project Indonesia is another example, many of the member are teenagers, some as young as 13 or 14 who lead workshop, run youth leadership program on the climate crisis, and organize community awareness campaign. Mental health professionals in this space emphasize the importance of what they call climate-aware therapy, a framework that validates environmental fear as rational response to a real crisis rather than symptom of individual dysfunction. In the Indonesian context, this means schools, parents, and community leaders should not dismiss young people’s climate fears as exaggerated thing. Instead, they should help young people move from passive fear to active engagement, because research consistently shows that taking action significantly it reducing the psychological burden of eco-anxiety. Education also plays a critical role, when young people understand the science behind climate change, they move from a vague feeling of dread to a more focused understanding of what is happening and why.

Eco-anxiety actually is a sign of empathy, it means you are paying attention, that you care about the world you live in and the world you will leave behind for the future generation. That instinct  to care, to worry, to want better is not a weakness. It is actually the starting point of every meaningful environmental movement in history. The challenges now is how to make sure that anxiety does not become paralyzing that it transforms instead into the kind of informed and hopeful so it can encourage collective action that Indonesia’s environment so urgently need.

Keywords: Anxiety, Community, Youth, Education, Wildfires