A new scientific study found a troubling connection between caffeine use, lack of sleep, and mental health symptoms in young children. The researchers looked at health data from over 9,600 children aged 9 to 11.
The team studied how much caffeine the children consumed, their sleep habits, and their brain scans to see how caffeine affects childhood development.
The results were published in the journal Biological Psychiatry Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. The data showed that children who drank more caffeine usually slept less and had a smaller surface area on the outer layer of their brains.
This part of the brain is important for things like controlling emotions, paying attention, and making complex decisions.
Scientists saw these brain differences even in kids who had just one caffeinated drink a week. Soft drinks were the main source of caffeine for this age group, but coffee and tea were also common. The study also found that kids who drank more caffeine had more mental health symptoms related to mood, behavior, and attention.
Divyangana Rakesh, the senior author from King’s College London, pointed out that caffeine is so common in daily life that people often forget kids are drinking it too. She said caffeine is a strong psychoactive substance, but there are no rules about how it is sold. Other studies show that almost two-thirds of teenagers today drink caffeine every week.
The researchers think that not getting enough sleep might help explain the brain changes they saw. However, they said their findings do not prove that caffeine alone causes these changes. Other factors linked to drinking soft drinks, like eating a lot of sugar and certain lifestyle habits, could also have played a big role.
