College students around the world have deep fears, if not despair, about the The existential threat of climate change — fears they may have harbored since childhood. As the frequency of severe weather events As the climate warms and the Earth's temperature rises, emotions have run high for many students across the United States, and it turns out that many are keeping their concerns about living on a warming planet to themselves.
In Information literacy project (PIL), the independent nonprofit research institute that I direct, a group of library, information science, and new media researchers (including myself) conducts nationwide research on the information-seeking behavior of college students and recent graduates. As PIL’s director and principal investigator, with 25 years of experience as a professor of new media and communication theory, I focus on researching what it is like to be a student in the digital age.
Earlier this year, we surveyed nearly 1,600 college students from nine U.S. universities and colleges as part of a larger study about how people living in the United States cope with and respond to news and information about climate change. Our survey asked why some students are distrustful or ambivalent, while others remain hopeful amid the darkness. This research was part of a yearlong study we led to examine how our sharply divergent attitudes and beliefs about climate change are shaped by the news and information we encounter, select, interact with, and share.
According to our survey data, 78 percent of student respondents indicated that climate change made them anxious about their future, and 88 percent reported that they were worried about future generations. As one respondent said in an open-ended question, “This is our future and we are watching it being destroyed.” Another wrote, “There has been so much damage and loss of life as a result of climate change that I feel like I am becoming numb to it—it’s just the new normal, especially for my generation.”
Yet amid the anxiety, there are glimmers of hope. Of those surveyed, 90 percent agreed that humanity has the ability to mitigate climate change, 78 percent believed in the power of individual action, and more than 80 percent were motivated to be part of the solution to climate change.
There is good news in findings like these for educators looking for opportunities to create change. Even if students say they are “sad,” “worried,” “anxious” and “angry” about living on an endangered planet, many are taking individual steps to fight climate change, no matter how small they may seem. Hannah Ritchie, a senior researcher at the Global Development Program at the University of Oxford and deputy editor of “Our World in Data,” refers to the growing attention to doing something about climate change as “urgent optimism”. Ritchie suggests Reframing the way we talk about climate change and that developing a sense of optimism and hope can be steps toward collective action.
In a opinion essay In an article published by Scientific American, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, an associate professor at Colby College, wrote that the key to talking to students about climate change is to let them express their feelings and fears before introducing any scientific data. That’s when debates can emerge and students can see how community climate action amplifies solutions, which can then counter despair, inform policymaking, and generate hope.
If teachers, librarians, and administrators at colleges and universities want to bring more attention to climate change, it is critical to understand not only what students know about the climate crisis, but also as They know this and they know how it shapes their beliefs and attitudes. How do students engage with and respond to the issue of climate change in the media, in conversations with others, and in their relationships with themselves?
Analyzing our survey data, we found that most students surveyed select information sources that include news about climate change, but do not consume it. While they follow news of all kinds, most said they had read, listened to, or heard only “some” or “a few” news stories about climate change in the previous week.
One reason may be the gloomy tone with which the media covers climate change. More than three-quarters of the student sample agreed with the statement that “the media focuses more on the negative effects of climate change than on solutions.” What seems to be missing from most climate coverage, from both left- and right-wing sources, is not so much a sense of urgency, but rather possible solutions and adaptations that offer a way forward.
A Previous PIL Study A study of student engagement with the news was conducted based on a survey of 5,844 undergraduate students at 11 American universities and concluded that the college classroom is an influential incubator for discussing news and interpreting current events. In that study, seven out of ten respondents said they had learned about news on a variety of topics in conversations with professors during the previous week.
From the open-ended responses to our current survey, we learned that the college classroom is also a crucial source of information to help students learn about climate change and what role they could play in doing something about it. As one student said, “Hearing about climate change makes me want to be part of a solution, that’s why I’m studying environmental science.”
While most students said they had similar views on climate change to those around them, including family and friends, their engagement in the public space was notably limited. Only 26 percent of students said they had shared ideas or links to news and information about climate change through in-person conversations or on social media during the month prior to the survey.
This contradiction is one of the complexities that emerged from our findings about climate change discourse: students are motivated to be part of the solution, but they do not actively talk to like-minded people in their lives about how they could collectively take action.
Surprisingly, many of the students we surveyed say they trust the veracity of climate scientists. This kind of trust is leveraged to make efficient decisions about the veracity of climate information: a significant majority (82 percent) agreed that scientists understand the causes of climate change, and more than half believed that most news stories about the climate crisis were credible.
Many students also expressed that they combined their innate trust with other methods to verify the reliability of news, such as comparing one source to another to verify facts. As they grew older, many say they learned about media and information literacy and made evaluating sources a regular practice. This finding confirms the success of librarians' research instruction with students.
Since the next generation of college students will be the ones living with the consequences of the decisions we make today regarding climate change, knowing their perspective is vital to addressing climate change today. Since many feel overwhelmed by anxiety and despair, we must find a way to transform their worries and fears into a sense that we are not doomed and that collective action is still possible and desperately needed.
Our survey picture of how college students are responding to climate change tells us that they have devoted much more attention to thinking about climate change than their counterparts in the general population. Higher education faculty and administrators have a critical role to play in helping students gain a sense of agency as we face a global climate challenge.
The classroom may be the best place for faculty to start. Classroom discussions about climate change news can help students see the connections between their journalism practices and their academic work, while also showing that news familiarity is a social practice and a form of civic engagement. Several studies in the Social sciences and Sciences They have shown that debates like these can foster critical thinking and disciplinary knowledge.
There is still much to be done to help students translate climate anxiety into shared action. But as one student wrote: “It is very easy to feel hopeless about a situation over which you have no direct control, but progress always starts from the bottom.”
