Hey! Welcome to the next entry…let’s talk about teens and caffeinated drinks. Now, I feel like a lot of us wouldn’t think of caffeine as a traditional substance, because it isn’t thought of as something that usually harms people. But recently, I learned in Driver’s Ed that caffeine is a stimulant, so it can raise your blood pressure/epinephrine level and make you feel lightheaded or dizzy (which can be harmful while driving). But I was curious to learn whether there are any, possibly more harmful side effects to drinking caffeine (for both adults and teens)…and it turns out that unfortunately, there are. Here’s what I found out.

So how does caffeine connect to teens? Before we dive into that, let’s talk about what moderate caffeine intake looks like. According to the Mayo Clinic, 400 mg of caffeine is safe for most healthy adults to consume per day. To put that into perspective, that’s about 4 cups of brewed coffee or 2 small energy drinks. More than 500-600 mg a day is considered “heavy” caffeine consumption. People who are in that range may suffer from gastrointestinal problems, trouble sleeping, anxiety, tremors, increased heart rate and even death.

But those statistics are for adults. In children and adolescents, 100-400 mg of caffeine a day is considered moderate consumption, and even that moderate consumption can trigger some of the side effects listed above. Studies show that adolescents may be consuming as much as 800 mg a day…leading the Mayo Clinic to suggest maximum caffeine consumption for teens per day to be 100 mg (and no caffeine consumption for younger children).

Clearly, many teens drink more than the recommended caffeine intake – but why exactly do they feel the need for caffeine consumption? Medical News Today collected information from a study with 166 adolescents, with 42% of the study being male and 72% being students in freshmen or sophomore year of high school. The results of their questionnaire showed that 44.6% consumed beverages with caffeine in them 1 – 6 times per week, 11.4% drank something with caffeine in it every day, and 4.8% never consumed caffeinated beverages. The primary reason why teens said they drank caffeine was to stay more alert, which they believed would help them study more effectively. Another reason was because they family members regularly drank caffeine at home, which normalized caffeine consumption and made them feel like it was a regular thing to do as you matured into an adult. Or, because caffeine is present in many soft drinks, so when teens purchase a soda they may not have a non-caffeinated option.

So what can we do about that? Dr. Danielle S. Battram advises that educating teens about the side effects of heavy caffeine consumption could help them rethink the amount of caffeine they want to drink per day. She thinks that alternative ways to get the same positive effects caffeine provides are maintaining healthy diets and getting adequate sleep. As always, I am not a doctor and am not here to give medical advice. But I hope you enjoyed this blog post, and have a fantastic day!