The first thing I drink most mornings is not water. It’s caffeine.

Sometimes it’s an iced oatmilk shaken espresso from Starbucks. Sometimes it’s a Red Bull cracked open before first period even begins. Sometimes it’s one of those brightly-colored “refreshers” that taste like artificial sugar.

I know I’m not alone in that. Walk through any high school  and you’ll see girls clutching energy drinks like accessories. We joke about it constantly — “I can’t function without caffeine,” “this is basically a meal,” “I’m running on an Alani Nu and pure anxiety.” It’s funny until it isn’t.

Because somewhere along the way, caffeine became a lifestyle marketed directly to young women.

The shift is hard to ignore. In the 2000s, energy drinks used to be associated with bodybuilders or gamers — dark cans, aggressive branding and extreme sports commercials. Now, many are packaged in pastel colors with names that sound more like lip gloss shades or nail polish colors than beverages. Scroll through TikTok and you’ll find influencers holding aesthetic cans while filming “productive day in my life” videos. These drinks are sold as wellness products, metabolism enhancers and appetite suppressants. They promise productivity, fitness and thinness all at once.

And they know exactly who they are targeting.

Brands like Alani Nu have built entire marketing campaigns around “wellness girl” culture: pilates classes, gym selfies and calorie-conscious language. Even drinks marketed as healthier alternatives often contain enormous amounts of caffeine. According to the National Institute of Health, many popular energy drinks contain far more caffeine than soda or even coffee, with some reaching 200 milligrams in a single can. For perspective, the FDA recommends adults consume no more than 400 milligrams per day. That means two drinks can push someone to the daily limit before dinner.

But the issue goes deeper than the caffeine content itself, especially as we consider the rhetoric surrounding it.

Young women are living under impossible expectations. We are expected to be academically successful, socially active, attractive, athletic and endlessly productive all at once. Rest feels lazy. Slowing down feels like failure. Caffeine becomes the fuel source for that pressure — a way to keep going even when our bodies are begging us not to.

Research has linked excessive energy drink consumption to increased anxiety, insomnia, dehydration and disordered eating behaviors, especially among young women. Studies also show women metabolize caffeine more slowly than men, meaning the side effects can last longer and hit harder. At the same time, energy drink advertising frequently reinforces harmful messages about metabolism, hunger control and “clean energy.” The implication is subtle but clear: consume this and you can become a better version of yourself.

And for many girls, caffeine is more a coping mechanism than a drink.

I have watched classmates replace breakfast with coffee. I have seen girls sip energy drinks through panic attacks because they still have practice, work and three assignments due before midnight. I have done it too. There is something deeply unsettling about how normalized it has become for teens to chemically force themselves through exhaustion.

This is not a manifesto against coffee. I will probably still have caffeine tomorrow morning. It has become stitched into the rhythm of my daily life: the thing that gets me through early mornings, late nights, work, deadlines.

For many young women, like me, caffeine is no longer just a drink; it has become a form of daily functioning, something our bodies and routines have quietly learned to depend on.

The issue is not the occasional latte or energy drink. The issue is the industry profiting off exhaustion while disguising it as self-empowerment.

Maybe young women are not consuming dangerous amounts of caffeine because we are lazy or addicted or irresponsible.

Maybe we are consuming it because we have been taught that our worth is tied to how much we can accomplish, how little we can rest and how efficiently we can ignore our own bodies.