Students’ Caffeine Consumption

“Maybe 100 cups.” Mrs. Helen Legos, a cafeteria worker, roughly recounts how many coffees are purchased from the cafeteria in a single day. The cafeteria used to have a Starbucks line, which “first introduced iced coffee” to the school. From there, the cafeteria’s coffee sales “just kicked off, and we got one of these cold brew machines.” For the students, the cold brew machine keeps getting more and more popular. “I think every year, word of mouth passes around, and they all love the flavoring. The mocha, the caramel macchiato, the amaretto. And they love their caffeine”, she concludes. Some students can see the change. Lilli Matson, an RHS junior, notices “kids especially drink coffee while they’re studying during their free period. Like in the campus center or learning commons, everyone has a coffee.”

On a more personal level, however, Mrs. Helen responds that “when I was a kid, I loved my coffee, so why not? A couple or so a day won’t hurt you, I don’t think, and my daughters love it.” Lilli, who would drink caffeine if it didn’t upset her stomach, also agrees that a few cups of caffeine is okay; for students, “there are so many extracurriculars and work to be done. So if they need a little Red Bull to stay awake in class, it’s okay.” 

Alex Antaramian, a senior who takes many rigorous courses and is captain of the RHS Color Guard, holds a similar opinion. “I feel like it’s fine in moderation. High school students usually go to sleep late and are super busy. But too much caffeine consumption is definitely not good for your body.” When asked about his daily habits, he describes “waking up at 7:30ish, going to color guard on Mondays and Wednesdays from 6-9 pm, getting home at 9:30 pm to shower and do homework, and going to sleep at 12ish. But lately I’ve been going to sleep around 1-2 am, which is so bad. Other students typically have shorter extracurriculars that last the whole week.”

Olivia Jee, an RHS junior, explains that she doesn’t “see anything positive in overconsuming anything, and caffeine could cause trouble sleeping. It also creates a negative cycle because students drink it to stay awake during the day, but that caffeine makes it harder for them to sleep later.” She describes everyone as “overall tired these days.” 

But who’s the main group drinking caffeine? Lilli had guessed that more juniors or seniors would be drinking coffee “because they have more work, and I don’t see too many freshmen or sophomores drinking it.” While upperclassmen could be bringing in their own drinks, Mrs. Helen explains that “most of our coffee customers are freshmen.” Alex agrees that he “started drinking coffee freshman year.” He saw the cold brew machine and started ordering it with “30% milk, 20% sugar, caramel creamer, and sometimes whipped cream.” Ava Fontus, the school president, also began drinking Kickstart energy drinks in her freshman year. “I feel like the cafeteria is your first exposure to energy drinks at RHS, if you don’t start drinking them already. And the big jump in workload when you first come to RHS has definitely made caffeine an outlet for a lot of freshmen.

Saige Rogers, a senior, feels that “energy drinks are a bigger problem because people’ll have the same drink for a while. Like if you’re going to Starbucks, you’ll get different drinks, and it’ll be every once in a while. But I know when I’m into Red Bull, I’ll have it like every day.” But, Ava feels that the school’s lack of access to certain strong energy drinks, such as Red Bull and Monster, causes very few people to drink them at school. “It definitely leaves people to bring their own stuff.”

But a lot of caffeine comes from outside of the school. Ava describes how “Everyone’s always sipping on something they bought before school. And it’s pretty consistent. I’m in the Acabellas, and literally every rehearsal, some girls in that group, without fail, will always have Starbucks. And I know that it’s not just specific to Acabella days. I feel like if I had to rate the amount of drinks I see, it’d go Starbucks, then Celsius they brought from home, then Dunkin.” 

Mrs. Sterni, a History teacher at RHS, explains how “I personally don’t have issues with kids bringing in drinks as long as it doesn’t detract from them being able to pay attention.” Mrs. Maklouf, a History and German teacher, describes that “I have maybe two students who bring in coffee regularly. It’s actually not as much as I would think. But otherwise, some mentioned that they drink coffee up to two cups outside of school.”

But Mrs. Sterni also reflects on the school culture that normalizes “showing up to school with a Starbucks drink or a Duckin’ Donuts drink, and that’s, like, absolutely not normal in most areas, I would say, in our state and our country. There’s an expectation for people that they can’t get something done without coffee or, like a drink, and I feel like you guys are too young to have that expectation of yourself.” 

Recent studies reveal that caffeine addictions cause the body’s adenosine receptors to only respond to caffeine, rather than the adenosine molecules they are supposed to bind with. In other words, someone’s body can grow used to coffee and depend on it for the energy they naturally had before. Mrs. Maklouf agrees that someone’s caffeine reliance might be more psychological than physiological. She used to have one to two cups of coffee a day, and recalls how “I always used to say, well, I need the coffee, I need the coffee. It’s gonna keep me more awake, but I noticed that that’s actually not true. Like, for me, it might have been more of a placebo.”

Ms. Sterni further considers that our habits could be the result of America’s larger “capitalistic culture of ‘we need to try to do the most and accomplish the most in a single day because that’s how you get ahead, and that’s how you possibly succeed in your job and move up through the ladder.’ Like a lot of that, you can’t do that if you don’t have the energy. So I feel like that is attached to our culture of the workplace and like attempting to be successful, and maybe that has trickled down to the kids.” 

Other reasons could be simpler. Ava Fontus feels that students are drawn to caffeine drinks just because “it’s trendy and it tastes good.”

When is caffeine a useful tool, a fun treat, or a dangerous ally? What kind of relationship should students have with it? Either way, it seems like the caffeine craze at RHS isn’t dying down anytime soon.