I hypothesized that 1) Eco-anxiety increases during adolescence, as a result of the teens’ growing awareness of environmental threats; 2) It is stronger in girls than in boys, in accordance with the anxiety research; 3) This difference emerges in early adolescence, based on Hill & Lynch’s “gender intensification hypothesis”. The 831 French participants were attending the three highest elementary school grades and the seven secondary school grades. They filled out the basic eco-anxiety scale for children and adolescents (BEASCA), a new six-item questionnaire, which proved to have acceptable psychometric properties for these ten grade groups. A grade-by-sex Anova revealed a rather large main effect of grade, with the five oldest groups reporting less eco-anxiety than the four youngest groups, and a medium sized main effect of sex, with girls being more eco-anxious than boys. A non-significant but tendential grade-by-sex interaction suggested that this sex difference emerges at the very end of elementary school. I discuss the origins of the unexpected decrease in eco-anxiety during early adolescence, and the utility of paying attention to children’s worrying about environmental issues.
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