Understanding “Eco Anxiety” in Adolescents and Young Adults

: As environmental issues become more complex, so do our emotional responses to them. Paul Robbins and Sarah A. Moore offer the term “ecological anxiety” to frame scholarly discourse around a fearful response to the “negative normative influence of humans on the earth” and the “inherent influence of normative human values within one’s own science”. This comprehensive literature review unpacks the implications of “eco anxiety” within. The eco anxiety framework is relatively new, with minimal consensus on symptomatic criteria. To appropriately reflect the thoughts, emotions, and experiences of adolescents and young adults, this literature review encourages more accessible climate communication for the sake of the public and science community. Furthermore, more avenues of research are needed to study the term eco anxiety to fit a global context extending beyond Western understanding.