Burnout Among the Youngest Climate Activists

A young person with red hair holds up a cardboard sign that reads System Change, Not Climate Change at a protest. — Image credit: Phil Hearing on Unsplash

Parables of Earth is a recurring column from NPQ’s Climate Justice desk exploring the connections between climate and art. Inspired in part by Octavia E. Butler, this column expands our lens on climate justice and taps into our deeply human inclination for creative expression—for joy, for strength, and for imagining new worlds.

Emotions about our planet are complex. And in a world where disasters are ever-escalating, while many global powers fail to act—or, in the case of the Donald Trump administration, actively loosening environmental protections and supporting pollutive industries—emotions can be constantly shifting too, from anxiety to anger to grief and helplessness.

For the youngest people on the planet, who have the most to lose from the climate crisis and who sometimes feel the most pressure to make change, these feelings can also lead to burnout with its symptoms of exhaustion, detachment, helplessness, and sense of failure. It’s long been an issue in the nonprofit field—as NPQ reported in 2024, 95 percent of nonprofit leaders surveyed listed burnout as a “top concern” either among themselves, their staff, or both—and it’s common in grassroots social justice and community groups as well.

In the past few years, young people have emerged as some of the most passionate, informed, and persuasive leaders of the climate movement. But, despite their youth, burnout has come for them too.

Climate and the Youth Mental Health Crisis

“I used to think burnout wouldn’t affect me, that I could push so hard, invest so much, and be OK. I thought because I was fighting for something bigger than me, because I believed so strongly in our ability to pull ourselves out of the climate crisis, that I could keep burnout at bay.” When Sena Wazer was 17 years old, she wrote these words for YES! magazine. Like many youth climate leaders, Wazer began her work as a child, at only five years old, when she said she felt compelled to protect whales.

A year later, while still in elementary school, she was already speaking on the radio about the environment. But by the time she was 16, “I started to hit a wall….I would suddenly be overwhelmed: at the magnitude of the problem, at the lack of action from political leaders, and at the fact that I felt like I had to do so much at such a young age,” she wrote.

Wazer listed the lack of action by some of her peers as a discouraging factor, not to mention some of the policy changes she fought hard for, like pushing for climate education in all public schools, failing at the legislative level.

“We are taught all about the actions people need to take, but we hardly ever talk about the toll those actions take on people.”

The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t help, and only “added challenges” to Wazer’s work with the climate nonprofit Sunrise Movement, as she continued to phone bank and engage with both community members and lawmakers.

The pandemic has been a significant factor in the mental health crisis facing American youth. As the US Surgeon General wrote in a 2021 advisory titled Protecting Youth Mental Health: “Since the pandemic began, rates of psychological distress among young people have increased”—a distressing trend that was on the rise even before COVID. The advisory noted that “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” reported by young people increased by 40 percent overall between 2009 and 2019.

The isolation during the early parts of the pandemic, including social distancing and remote schooling, combined with physical aspects of long COVID such as exhaustion and brain fog, have taken a toll on younger generations. Recent studies show that 5 to 25 percent of children develop long COVID. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) reported in 2023 that young people were more likely than older adults to experience mental health issues. Almost 50 percent of young adults ages 18 to 24 reported symptoms of depression or anxiety, compared to 32.3 percent of older adults. KFF noted that youth have “come of age in an era of pandemic-related school closures, remote work and job and income loss, all of which may contribute to poor mental health.”

At the same time, the climate crisis has accelerated at a pace faster than many scientists and researchers expected, leaving some younger climate activists feeling desperate.

Students were often punished by their schools for taking part in climate actions and dismissed by adults in positions of power.

As 18-year-old climate activist Jamie Margolin, cofounder of the Zero Hour movement, told Action for the Climate Emergency, “We are taught all about the actions people need to take, but we hardly ever talk about the toll those actions take on people. It is easy in today’s hustle culture to get so caught up in the ‘doing’ aspect of activism, that you forget how it feels and end up burning yourself out.”

How to Help Young People Experiencing Burnout

While action is sometimes thought of as an antidote for burnout, some young people are doing too much too fast—and doing it alone, without the support they need from older adults. A 2021 Australian study published in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, coauthored by adult researchers and young leaders, found that structural changes were needed to help youth both contribute to climate justice and stay mentally healthy. The study authors wrote, “We know taking action can help when we feel despair—but if we do not have support, good mentoring and capacity building opportunities, this action can lead to us burning out. We need adults around us to support our actions and help us be effective.”

The study mentioned that students were often punished by their schools for taking part in climate actions and dismissed by adults in positions of power, including educators: “It would be great if they help us to be effective, find opportunities for us to talk with people that can make a difference, listen when we are angry, and, instead of dismissing us (telling us to stay in school and get good grades so we can get a good job), help us problem solve in a way that makes a genuine difference.”

“Art therapy is a way to express one’s emotions in a way that is beyond the limitations of words.”

Young climate activists may also find relief in doing other activities, unrelated to their work for climate justice. For some, that can include art. Importantly, “this is not asking people to show up and become Pablo Picasso,” Sarah Newman told Yale Climate Connections.

As founder and executive director of the Climate Mental Health Network, an organization that supports emotional resilience for youth, parents, and educators, Newman talks about the importance of processing emotions through art-making, from performing music to painting. For young people involved in the climate movement, art can be a way to channel frustration, anger, and fear about the climate crisis.

“Art therapy is a way to express one’s emotions in a way that is beyond the limitations of words,” Newman said. “And it’s a way to tap into experiences and feelings that you might be having or that you might not even necessarily fully recognize.”

Art can also be a method of stepping away, of doing something unrelated to climate.

Like adults, young people need the freedom to take a break from their work. Even the most urgent activism is not worth sacrificing personal health and wellbeing, and young climate leaders need to be aware of the signs of burnout so that they can take that step back when needed.

As Margolin said, “What I learned from those [activism] experiences is that balance is important. There is so much going on in the world my instinct is always to do as much as possible. But I learned to respect my own limits and learn to tell when I was about to burnout, so I could step back and rest.”