Excessive caffeine and other random shit is the main concern, which is associated with sleep problems, anxiety, depression and suicidality in teens.
You’re going to have to clarify your claims here. Caffeine intake can effect sleep yes, but teenagers have ridiculous sleep patterns anyway. Early wakeups from school also negatively affect teenage sleep patterns, so does electronic usage close to bed, a lack of exercise, excessive salt consumption, stress etc. If we are making the claim that caffeine is the best place to have an intervention here you’re going to have to back that up (and differentiate from people consuming caffeine because their sleep is fucked up).
Same with suicide et al. Are you saying caffeine causes suicide? or is likely to? That is a very strong claim. Caffeine certainly makes people jittery, people with anxiety might benefit from avoiding it. Are you making a causative claim here? or that products which are harmful to some teenagers should be banned? or what?
edit: forgot the UK did a sugar tax. Almost a good policy there, except regressive taxation kinda blows.
I’m not sure what there is to clarify. We don’t and never could have causational studies because jamming kids full of caffeine is kind of unethical, but yes, there are studies showing correlation between caffeine intake in teens and suicidality. And I think trying to reduce energy drink consumption as part of effort to reduce that likely harm is a good move, yes.
People self-medicating with things that are easily available is incredibly common. That’s a major reason for why people pick up smoking as a habit: people try it and most people bounce off it, but for some people it (poorly) medicates some undiagnosed or untreated mental health problem so they start using it until they’re also chemically addicted to nicotine and have firmly connected consuming nicotine with feeling less bad in their brains. With that understanding, how is it not abundantly clear that there’s going to be a correlation between consuming easily available, unregulated stimulants and things that are comorbidities with ADHD or are otherwise at least partially alleviated by even a mild stimulant like caffeine?
You can do longitudonal studies but it’s very hard. You can also withdrawal caffeine and see if people get better. It is irresponsible to make sweeping policy changes on correlations alone. Consider, basically everyone with schizophrenia smokes, smoking doesn’t cause schizophrenia. People are solving some problem, even if not in the best way. Withdrawing the drug without offering some other treatment is likely counterproductive.
If people felt shit and didn’t sleep much or slept too much (both defining symptoms of depression) I would absolutely expect them to reach for a stimulant to help them. I would not also necessarily expect removing the stimulant to help.
Also kids with unmedicated adhd often overuse the shit out of caffeine because they can’t function otherwise. Undiagnosed adhd is significant cause of depression and anxiety.
You’re going to have to clarify your claims here. Caffeine intake can effect sleep yes, but teenagers have ridiculous sleep patterns anyway. Early wakeups from school also negatively affect teenage sleep patterns, so does electronic usage close to bed, a lack of exercise, excessive salt consumption, stress etc. If we are making the claim that caffeine is the best place to have an intervention here you’re going to have to back that up (and differentiate from people consuming caffeine because their sleep is fucked up).
Same with suicide et al. Are you saying caffeine causes suicide? or is likely to? That is a very strong claim. Caffeine certainly makes people jittery, people with anxiety might benefit from avoiding it. Are you making a causative claim here? or that products which are harmful to some teenagers should be banned? or what?
edit: forgot the UK did a sugar tax. Almost a good policy there, except regressive taxation kinda blows.
I’m not sure what there is to clarify. We don’t and never could have causational studies because jamming kids full of caffeine is kind of unethical, but yes, there are studies showing correlation between caffeine intake in teens and suicidality. And I think trying to reduce energy drink consumption as part of effort to reduce that likely harm is a good move, yes.
FWIW -
Adolescents with high caffeine intake have ~67% more sleep problems.
Energy drinks in adolescents are correlated with anxiety, stress, depression and suicidality
People self-medicating with things that are easily available is incredibly common. That’s a major reason for why people pick up smoking as a habit: people try it and most people bounce off it, but for some people it (poorly) medicates some undiagnosed or untreated mental health problem so they start using it until they’re also chemically addicted to nicotine and have firmly connected consuming nicotine with feeling less bad in their brains. With that understanding, how is it not abundantly clear that there’s going to be a correlation between consuming easily available, unregulated stimulants and things that are comorbidities with ADHD or are otherwise at least partially alleviated by even a mild stimulant like caffeine?
You can do longitudonal studies but it’s very hard. You can also withdrawal caffeine and see if people get better. It is irresponsible to make sweeping policy changes on correlations alone. Consider, basically everyone with schizophrenia smokes, smoking doesn’t cause schizophrenia. People are solving some problem, even if not in the best way. Withdrawing the drug without offering some other treatment is likely counterproductive.
If people felt shit and didn’t sleep much or slept too much (both defining symptoms of depression) I would absolutely expect them to reach for a stimulant to help them. I would not also necessarily expect removing the stimulant to help.
Also kids with unmedicated adhd often overuse the shit out of caffeine because they can’t function otherwise. Undiagnosed adhd is significant cause of depression and anxiety.