People aren’t generally affected by issues that are out of sight like those you list. A classmate saying something critical about an teenagers appearance will be 100x more impactful than the rainforests imminent disappearance.
People care about things relevant to subjects they have an emotional connection to already. This system of inference is different between individuals of course.
The relevant question should be, why do so many people care about ultimately meaningless stuff? That's what GP was on about in my opinion, people telling children authoritatively what is or isn't important while being obviously wrong about it.
Things like pollution, food price inflation, and craptastic government policies are far from out of sight because they impact families directly, even if teens don't fully appreciate all the ramifications.
