High school-age students see drinking sodas, coffee, and other caffeinated drinks as a way to study better and as a “sign of being grown up,” finds a new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.
Based on in-depth interviews with 166 students, mostly in grades 9 and 10, researchers from Brescia University College in Ontario, Canada, found more than 44.6 percent drank caffeinated beverages one to six times a week, and more than 11 percent had caffeine daily. The students’ most common reason for doing so was to be more alert to study better, but many also reported considering it a more adult behavior. Caffeine is the only psychoactive drug that is both legal and generally socially acceptable for children to use casually, according to senior author and Brescia University researcher Danielle Battram.
