Social media blows up the fear about climate change (it definitely will not be "unlivable") and political extremisism.
Being misinformed about things you can do nothing to change isn't good for mental health, regardless of your age, and that's exactly what social media does.
This notion that "it doesn't directly affect teens so they don't care" is a painfully naive narrative. If anything teens have A LOT of time and energy and little clue what to do with it. So many naturally find something to care/obsess over, with or without social media. (although it is probably amplified by it)
Teenagers are affected by recessions, inflations, housing costs and education. Their parents cant afford things, argue about money, they have to move, loose house, learn they have to take more debt for college or plain cant afford them.
I mean, yes, if your parents are rich, then teenager has zero idea about the above. But, everyone else, poor teenagers, lower and middle class teenagers are affected. know.
Yeah, we will probably survive for the next 50 years at least. But climate events will be making life a lot harder. Droughts, floods, forest fires and tornados will be wrecking havoc in many places. Even if you don't live in one of those places, you'll be feeling the effects through shortages (as we're currently experiencing a very small taste of in Europe), refugees and political instability.
I don't really disagree with you, but I don't think it's a good idea to be dismissive in any form about the consequences of climate change, as people are built in such a way that we grasp onto such messages as an excuse not to take action. We should be focusing on this.
I feel like you are fundamentally misinformed here. It has never been the case that IPCC predicted "end of the world" in terms of climate predictions, even in the worst case. And in fact things have been improving since the worst predictions. We are currently headed to a 3 degrees C temperature increase. Which will cause global hardship on a massive level, but it's not anywhere near what's needed to wipe out even civilization let alone all/most humans.
> Even if you don't live in one of those places, you'll be feeling the effects through shortages (as we're currently experiencing a very small taste of in Europe), refugees and political instability.
The shortages in Europe are largely self-inflicted by poor vetting of business partners and "perfect is the enemy of better" behavior and have basically no relation to climate change.
No but with that also comes a bigger variance in extremes. Which brings more things like the current ridiculous heatwave and crop issues in india and pakistan which have what...1.5 billion people? Things like this should absolutely shock people. Much much smaller things like 9/11 have caused shocked and awe.
I didn't mean to imply otherwise. What's needed to end civilization isn't quite clear though. It may not be much.
> The shortages in Europe are largely self-inflicted
I only referred to these (currently mild) shortages to paint a picture of what I think we're likely to see a lot more of. I agree that climate change is only a minor factor in these particular shortages.
If you don't quantify the increase, it means nothing. We already suffer those things and we cope fine.
The hell it doesn’t! Did you even put a moment’s thought into that claim? Parents losing a job, or a house, or not being able to afford new clothes, or FFS the other hundreds of impacts recessions and inflation have on a family affect teenagers. Talk about misinformed, lordy lor’
