Support networks aim to help kids through the polycrisis
Sometime in the late 2000s, Pim Sullivan-Tailyour was sitting in the back of a car, headed toward her great-grandmother’s tiny town in the south of Thailand. She watched big mountains pass by out the window. She was just six years old but was about to be hit by an adult-size realization. “They were just quarried…
Sometime in the late 2000s, Pim Sullivan-Tailyour was on her way to her great-grandmother's village in southern Thailand. She noticed mountains being quarried away, leaving behind an orange face. She sensed that humans were altering the world, and it didn't seem right. This realization stayed with her as she moved to the UK and joined a sustainability network, but she found herself alone in her activism efforts.
This loneliness and burnout led her to discover Force of Nature, an online group designed to help young people cope with environmental anxiety. She joined and found that she wasn't alone in her feelings. Global surveys show that most kids are anxious about the world's state, not just climate change, but also the pandemic, conflicts, nuclear weapons, economic struggles, healthcare costs, authoritarianism, job scarcity, and AI concerns.
This "polycrisis" has led to higher rates of depression and anxiety in younger generations. Online networks like Force of Nature aim to help these young people process their feelings and channel their anxiety into action. However, the effectiveness of these networks is still being studied, and mental health professionals are calling for more research to determine which programs are truly beneficial for young people's mental well-being.
Written by urgent.news from MIT Technology Review's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
