For nearly half of young people, worry about the future affects daily life

This is not distant worry. It reaches into sleep, study, work and plans.

In the same study of ten thousand young people across ten countries, more than forty-five percent said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning. This is the figure that should stop us, more than the headline about worry. It is one thing to be concerned about the future. It is another for that concern to reach into sleep, study, work, relationships and plans, and for nearly half a generation, it does.

Daily functioning is the line that separates an opinion from a burden. When a worry affects how you sleep, how you concentrate, whether you feel able to make long-term plans, it has stopped being a view you hold and become a weight you carry. The researchers were careful to measure this, because it is the difference between a generation that is engaged with a problem and one that is being quietly worn down by it.

It is worth being precise about what this does and does not say. It does not say that nearly half of young people are unwell. It says their worry about the future is heavy enough to be felt in ordinary life, which is a normal human response to feeling that large things are out of your hands. The most reliable antidote to that particular kind of helplessness is not reassurance but agency and company, having something small you can do and people to do it alongside.

That is the honest offer The Tribe is being built around. We cannot make the future certain, and we will not pretend to. What we can help build is the company that makes an uncertain future easier to carry, and a few concrete, human-sized things to do rather than face it alone. We are early, and we would rather you help build it than wait for it. When worry has reached this far into daily life, being among people who understand it is not a luxury. It is part of the way through.