Energy Drinks and Risky Behavior in Teens
As most of you are aware energy drinks have been getting a lot of bad press lately. I think this pretty much fits with the prevailing attitude in the US to make life as safe as possible. Gone are the days of public pool high dives and riding bikes with your hair blowing in the wind.
According to Kathleen Miller with The Journal of American College Health, new research has found a link between energy drinks, athletes and risky behavior. They have even coined the phrase “Toxic Jock” Behavior. They believe that when teen athletes consume energy drinks, they are more likely to engage in risky and aggressive behavior such as unprotected sex, drug use and violence.
OK, is it just me or do you also remember the stories passed around high school on Monday about what trouble the jocks got into after their Friday night football games. I think I remember many stories about unprotected sex, drug use, fist fights, and vandalism.
I graduated in 1991 and Red Bull hit the market in 1997 so I think this problem has been around before the invention of the energy drink.
Once again we are on the verge of being handed down more laws to govern our wayward existence. I have a strange feeling however, that just as gun laws haven’t stopped school shootings, banning energy drinks won’t decrease unprotected sex, drug use, and violence.
Perhaps if all the risky behavior that many of us enjoyed as teens wasn’t now legislated and litigated out of existence, teens would have other avenues in which to release their innate need for risk.
source: New York Times
5 Comments
The media will do anything to take the blame away from society.
god forbid parents responsibility for raising their child with poor decision-making skills. being among the generation mentioned in this article, i am quite sickened by it all. my mother was no exception to my criticism. baby-on-board hasn’t died at all, though the placards may have. fortunately the “youth detroying broken home” SAVED me, and the fatherly influence of a 1970s man brought to light more choices, and the ability to deal with them.
parents are coddling their kids throughout their younger years, severly inhibiting their problem-solving and reasoning skills, and this is the product of it. i wont lie, i consume energy drinks pretty much every day. but i’ve never had unprotected sex, nor do i have a substance abuse problem, and i’m nothing close to violent.
people need to stop focusing on stupid b.s. like this and start focusing more on things that matter…like what is happening with the economy and their government.
That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. If they ban energy drinks, why not alcohol? It causes a LOT more accidents that a little caffeine!!!!!!!!!!! 
:(
Well, if this is the tip of the ice berg I’m stocking up man. There is no F’ing way that they’ll take my energy drinks. I’ve tried Coffee, it’s not my thing.
ROCKSTAR ZERO CARB FOR LIFE!!!
Hear hear!