Esa's Notebook

Recent events, war, economic insecurity and economic problems, as well as environmental issues, have increased people’s sense of anxiety – especially among young people. This is, of course, easy to understand when social media, newspapers, and broadcasts are full of news, one more distressing than the other. Three years of a globally unprecedented infectious disease pandemic and after that war in Europe have eroded people’s resilience. No such global state of emergency has been experienced since the Second World War. The increase in anxiety is also influenced by the fact that people live in an increasingly distressing environment, which video games, movies and social media content can create.

Finnish Academy Research Fellow Salmela-Aro’s study (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2022.101887) found that in Finland, young people can funnel anxiety and concern about climate change for activities that can mitigate climate change. However, negative emotions related to climate change, such as anxiety and worry, also increase mental health challenges. The action does not completely eliminate anxiety. The social or other media has a significant impact on climate anxiety.

As such, this anxiety is nothing new. At all times, young people, in particular, have been anxious about current phenomena. In the 60s, people were haunted by the danger of nuclear war, then by overpopulation or energy running out, and now by news of war, energy shortages, rising prices and climate change.

However, it would be vital to understand that although anxiety can act as some kind of motivator, it is not necessarily constructive and certainly not normal when glorified or expressly pursued. Increasing global anxiety, as Greta Thunberg does, is not really of any use, but  quite the opposite; people prone to intense anxiety are not able to act rationally, but can become passive and depressed. Therefore, efforts should be made to ensure that communication, including social media content, takes into account people’s different abilities to receive and respond to messages. The producers of the news media are responsible for what is conveyed to the people. Increasing anxiety and fear is of little benefit besides  creating clickbait headlines. As it is, tabloids can be hidden (https://yle.fi/a/3-12338642).

Not only are fear and anxiety in themselves mostly useless burdens for a person, but many topics of fear have also proven futile over time: the price of electricity, gas and gasoline, employment, etc. In other words, the prospects are not necessarily as pessimistic as clickbait journalism tells us. I think that people should be more optimistic about the future. In spite of everything, it would be important to create a positive image of the future, and to give people hope and light. It would be important for people to be able to see the future and believe in it and build the future with optimism. Wars, various epidemics and economic distress have come and gone throughout human history and will continue to do so. If optimism gained more ground in people’s thinking, it would be a building force and we could construct a good future for society. Building faith in the future is much more beneficial than crippling intimidation.