Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, R. E., Mayall, E. E. et al. (2021). Climate Anxiety in Children and Young People and Their Beliefs about Government Responses to Climate Change: A Global Survey. The Lancet Planetary Health, 5, e863-e873.
https://doi.org/10.1016/s2542-5196(21)00278-3

has been cited by the following article:

• TITLE: The Development of Eco-Anxiety through Middle Childhood and Adolescence

  AUTHORS: Pascal Mallet

  KEYWORDS: Eco-Anxiety, Public Health, Children, Adolescents, Development

  JOURNAL NAME: Psychology, Vol.15 No.11, November 18, 2024

  ABSTRACT: I hypothesized that 1) Eco-anxiety increases during adolescence, as a result of the teens’ growing awareness of environmental threats; 2) It is stronger in girls than in boys, in accordance with the anxiety research; 3) This difference emerges in early adolescence, based on Hill & Lynch’s “gender intensification hypothesis”. The 831 French participants were attending the three highest elementary school grades and the seven secondary school grades. They filled out the basic eco-anxiety scale for children and adolescents (BEASCA), a new six-item questionnaire, which proved to have acceptable psychometric properties for these ten grade groups. A grade-by-sex Anova revealed a rather large main effect of grade, with the five oldest groups reporting less eco-anxiety than the four youngest groups, and a medium sized main effect of sex, with girls being more eco-anxious than boys. A non-significant but tendential grade-by-sex interaction suggested that this sex difference emerges at the very end of elementary school. I discuss the origins of the unexpected decrease in eco-anxiety during early adolescence, and the utility of paying attention to children’s worrying about environmental issues.