Madi Handley

High schools have made it so that their students are overworking themselves and get little sleep making their students drink energy drinks to stay awake. Schools are meant to be protecting their students. Why are they causing their students to turn to something harmful?

As a high schooler staying up late to finish assignments all for the good grade has become a regular thing making a good night’s sleep sparse. 

Each day high school students attend school for around six to eight hours, participate in extracurriculars, work an after-school job, and then go home to attend to the homework that was assigned to them that night. This leaves little time for basic necessities like showering, eating, and sleep. 

With a lack of sleep, teens have turned to caffeine to keep them awake so the cycle can continue.

As school has progressed, the workload and demand for excellence has grown. One of the major and most stressful parts of high school is preparing and applying to colleges. Colleges have become more selective with students making the need to stand out among the rest greater. 

To distinguish themselves, students have to take harder classes, make great test scores, earn good grades, participate in extracurriculars, and more just to make themselves known among colleges. This has caused teenagers’ days to be packed from morning to night. 

For teenagers it comes down to that the need to succeed is greater than the need for sleep. How school is set up now has caused teenagers to rely on energy drinks and caffeine.

Energy drinks come with many problems, especially among adolescents. When youth drink energy drinks it can cause many different health problems from a stunt in brain development, anxiety, heart problems, depression, and blood pressure problems. These can be lifelong problems.

Most teenagers deal with some of these issues already. Adding a needed energy drink can potentially make it worse.  While it is people’s right to choose what they put in their body and teenagers are old enough to understand the effect that these drinks have, it can still be known that they are harming adolescents.  

Schools are here to protect and teach adolescents whereas right now they are harming them. With the demands that are put on teenagers every day, schools have made the students turn to something harmful to keep up.

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