A survey commissioned in the United Kingdom found that children are experiencing bad dreams or having trouble eating because they are concerned about climate change.
The results of a joint effort between BBC’s Newsround and marketing firm Savanta ComRes, which were released Tuesday, showed nearly 1 in 5 children admitted to having a bad dream about climate change. Seventeen percent of respondents indicated their sleeping and eating habits had been affected by their concerns.
The study asked 2,000 young people between the ages of 8 and 16 a series of questions about their attitudes on climate change and the environment. An overwhelming majority, 73%, said they were worried about the state of the planet.
“Young people are clearly worried about climate change and their futures, as this survey reveals,” said Emma Citron, a consultant and clinical child psychologist. “Public figures like David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg have helped young people to voice their worries, and we have to make sure that we as adults listen to them and empower them by giving talks at school and in their communities to help them become involved in positive change.”
Thunberg, a 17-year-old climate activist from Sweden, made international headlines for a passionate speech she delivered before a group of world leaders gathered at the United Nations in September.
“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!” Thunberg said. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet, I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying.”
She continued: “Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.”
The growing phenomenon in children is what researchers call “climate anxiety.”
“We can say that a significant proportion of people are experiencing stress and worry about the potential impacts of climate change, and that the level of worry is almost certainly increasing,” said Susan Clayton, a professor of psychology and environmental studies at the College of Wooster.
David Spellman, a clinical psychologist, told the Guardian one of the factors contributing to fear about the warming planet among children was alarmist representations of the situation in media around the world.
“In my day — I’m 56 — it was about nuclear war,” Spellman said. “That was something that was bewildering, but felt real.”
Thunberg has since been named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.” President Trump attacked her following her speech, saying she had an “anger management problem” and should go to “a good old fashioned movie with a friend.” The activist responded by changing her Twitter biography to say she was a “teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.”
