Caffeine: friend or foe?

Samantha Klein, Entertainment Editor

Drive into the Subway parking lot during lunch, and you will find a line of students waiting to get their caffeine fix at the RVC coffee stand. Liberty students aren’t the only ones in this situation.  Teenagers across America are obsessed with sugary energy drinks and bittersweet coffee. While this may seem harmless, too much caffeine can have negative effects on young adults. 

How much caffeine you should have in a day is different for everyone depending on your weight, age, sex, and levels of caffeine dependency. However, experts recommend no more than 100 milligrams a day for the average teenager. For context, a sixteen oz Monster Energy drink contains 160mg of caffeine and a grande Starbucks latte contains 150mg of caffeine. Having this much caffeine every day can lead to developing a dependency that has negative effects on your well-being. 

“Caffeine has definitely affected my sleep schedule, and it’s messed up how I work. I think I would work a lot better if I didn’t depend on it,” senior Emma Decasa said. 

Caffeine intake can lead to increased levels of anxiety, headaches, upset stomachs, and jitters. It can also increase your heart rate, blood pressure, and stress hormones. So why do high school students drink so much caffeine? Despite all of its harmful effects, many students rely on the caffeine buzz just to get through the school day or finish their homework. 

“I wake up in the morning, and I drink coffee. Then at lunch, I go get a coffee. If I don’t get either of those coffees, I cannot function,”  junior Neha Suresh said. 

The issue of students consuming high amounts of caffeine may be linked to a larger, broader problem surrounding how our school system runs and what is expected of students in order to succeed in high school. Students are expected to go to school for seven hours, attend extracurriculars and sports, and then do several hours of homework when they get home, all while balancing their social and personal lives. This is enough to make anyone exhausted.  

“It all leads back to mental health problems that need to be addressed. Coffee is just the basic surface-level issue. It might not seem like a big deal, but everything that’s linked to it should be looked into,” Decasa said. 

For now, high levels of caffeine intake remain a shared experience for a large portion of Liberty’s student (and staff) body.

“Caffeine is a really useful tool for students, but it’s easy to misuse. Students need to be aware of how they’re treating their bodies, and realize that caffeine isn’t always the solution,” Suresh said.