Climate Detectives Projects 2023-2024

Project title: Climate anxiety in Belgian youth

College Hagelstein   Sint-Katelijne-Waver   Belgium

Research question

How is Belgian youth coping with climate change?

Summary of the project

Young people experience stress due to climate crisis. Research by Ipsos, Amsterdam, shows that 20% of the Dutch population aged between 16 and 30 experiences climate anxiety. Climate anxiety is an umbrella term for all the negative effects people experience as a result of climate change. This can lead to mental complaints such as sadness, anger, fear and helplessness, as well as physical complaints such as headaches and fatigue. According to Ipsos’ study, adults are also aware of climate change, but they seem to have given up fighting it more.
Weather also affects people’s mood. In fact, contact with sunlight on the skin triggers the production of serotonin, the substance that gives us a good mood, as the hormone suppresses negative emotions such as anxiety, aggression and sadness. Vitamin D is also produced by sunlight and indirectly lowers the risk of depression. This has to do with the influence it has on the brain function and hormonal pathways. Temperature affects energy levels: tendency to hibernate is triggered by cold temperatures that make us feel more tired. Too warm a temperature also causes fatigue and laziness as we use energy to cool down.
Our study examines the relationship between weather and the wellbeing students of College Hagelstein. How does the weather affect their wellbeing? How does climate anxiety affect their wellbeing?
For our first investigation, we sent a google forms every week (from January till March) to a class of 22 students. The group consists of 6 girls and 16 boys between the age of 15 and 17. In this forms we ask about the scale of happiness of the students in relation of the weather. End March 2024 we sent another forms, this time to all 800 students of College Hagelstein, between the age of 12-18. Students were asked about the awareness of climate change and its effects on wellbeing.

Main results and Conclusions

How is Belgian youth coping with climate change?

From the results of our weekly interrogation, we observed mild correlations between temperature and physical condition and between temperature and concentration level. Both correlations could be explained by the energy a body consumes to warm itself. When the temperature is low, students generally felt more sad. This could be related to hormones like serotonin produced when exposed to sunlight.
Then, we did a survey for the entire school, for students and staff. We received a total of 300 answers, 121 of which were male and 173 female students. 94% of the female and 91% of the male students were aware of climate change and its consequences. As a follow-up question we asked if they were worried about climate change: 26% of all male students were genuinely worried as compared to 41% of all female students. In conclusion, there is a significant difference in anxiety among gender. Previous studies about teen’s mental health confirmed that girls during adolescence experience higher levels of stress than boys.
31% of the younger students, 12-15 years old, considered climate change as a problem, as compared to 27 of the older students (16-18 years old). In contrast, 79% of the staff was worried. Unexpectedly, the adult staff appeared more concerned about climate change than the students.

16% of the students experience additional stress because of climate change. 23% is worried about the climate change-related problems we may face in Belgium in the near future. Finally, we explored what students think are the three most important world issues. 70% included climate change, but even more respondents find war a bigger problem.
So, we conclude that students aren’t really all that worried about climate problems. To date, the students’ most important concern is conflict and war. Recently, war is on the news nearly every day and gets a lot of media attention, while climate change receives less attention.

What’s Next? Actions to make a difference and help lessen the problem

Maybe if the media and news were to put the climate change more in the spotlight, more people would be aware of the situation. More importantly, more people would, hopefully, understand the problems which are caused by climate change and understand that it is a serious threat that needs to be solved. Another possible solution could be to engage in collective actions at schools. One of the causes of climate stress is the thought helplessness. If schools were to promote collaboration towards productive ecological goals, those students with climate stress will likely feel better. A possible action could be a clean-up of the playground or the neighbourhoud. Another potential idea it to open the discussion and to raise awareness about the consequences of climate change by doing experiments on the topic. For example, teachers could demonstrate the effects of carbon dioxide on algae by doing a small-scale experiment. This way students could become more aware of the consequences and become more motivated to make a change.

Projects are created by the teams and they take the full responsibility of the shared data.
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