“The alarmist environmental messaging spread in schools is causing an epidemic of climate anxiety that is creating a generation of psychologically paralysed young Australians,” said Clare Rowe, educational psychologist and Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs.
A new, landmark IPA research report, Climate Change Anxiety in Pre-Adolescent Children: A Neuroscientific and Psychological Perspective, reveals an alarming rise in climate anxiety among pre-adolescent children in Australia.
“As a clinician, to see children as young as five are experiencing fear, hopelessness, and a sense of impending doom related to what they are taught at school about climate change is alarming. Parents need to understand the psychological burden being placed on their children,” said Ms Rowe.
“The emotional toll on children is being amplified by the tone and content of educational materials that catastrophises environmental issues and asserts that young children have no future.”
“By presenting issues as existential threats to children before they are developmentally ready is inducing despair rather than hope and agency for the future,” said Ms Rowe.
The research report clearly outlines that climate change education, as currently delivered in the National Curriculum, is developmentally inappropriate.
“Young children are not cognitively equipped to process complex global threats, and this risks clinical anxiety and emotional harm,” said Ms Rowe.
“My colleagues and I are witnessing the psychological effects of overwhelming children’s immature emotional systems with a perfect storm of fear-based messaging, cognitive overload, and a loss of perceived control that leads to helplessness and despair,” said Ms Rowe.
“Children are losing sleep, experiencing nightmares, and expressing fears about the future of the planet. We must stop treating climate distress in children as an acceptable cost of environmental activism,” said Ms Rowe.
The research underscores the responsibility of educators to deliver balanced, age-appropriate information that empowers rather than frightens young Australians. The research recommends:
- Abolishing the National Curriculum Cross-Curriculum Priority of Sustainability with climate change education to be confined to age appropriate and science-based material.
- Delaying climate education until at least secondary school
- Rebalancing curriculum time by prioritising core competencies of literacy and numeracy in primary education, the foundational skills upon which all future learning depends.
- Ensuring mental health professionals focus on resilience-building rather than distress validation.
“There is a critical difference between fostering environmental responsibility and instilling pathological eco-anxiety — we have crossed that line,” said Ms Rowe.
“Reforming climate education is essential to ensuring that children develop a lifelong commitment to environmental responsibility without experiencing unnecessary psychological distress.”
To download the IPA’s research click here.
