If you watched students enter the school in the morning, you would see that many of them will be holding a caffeinated drink. This caused the impression that the students at Collierville high school were all facing a caffeine addiction. After further research it was discovered that this was not the case.
After having students fill out a survey on their caffeine intake, the data proved that most students don’t even have caffeine every day. This survey helped us find out that most students don’t think that they need caffeine to function and most don’t even think about it much when they don’t have it. But, if someone around them has caffeine, 60% of these students will start to crave it. This suggests teens aren’t addicted to caffeine, but they want to have things that everyone else has.
This can tie back to many other things that aren’t just caffeine. Students in high school have malleable minds and in a world of technology, this becomes more obvious. Students want to be like everyone else, they want to fit the mold. In an environment with tons of students of a similar age, like school, there will be more of a demand to fit in. This can be seen by all the students wearing the brand Lululemon and Oncloud shoes. Brands like these are known for being expensive and most of the time one could find better quality items for cheaper, but students feel the need to have these name brands just because the people around them have them. Much like caffeine, without the influence of others, students would not feel as much of a pull to things like this. Especially with the influence of things like TikTok that shove the idea that everyone else has these specific things in the faces
Social media is the biggest factor making teens feel as if they must have all these materialistic things. Without the influence of social media, there would be much less of these overly popular brands circulating in high schools everywhere. Most social media platforms know that the majority of their demographic is teens and they use this as a marketing advantage. The largest proportion of TikTok users in the United States are teenagers and TikTok uses this to their advantage with specific marketing, making teens feel as if they need a product or else they will be seen as uncool or left out. This is known as the bandwagon technique in marketing, and it works best with teens. While it is not used as a marketing technique in settings such as a high school, the same idea still applies. Students see that everyone else has something and this makes them feel like they need the same product to be accepted.
Due to the critical nature of teenagers, students feel as if they must fit in because they know that people will be subconsciously judging them if they are not perfectly in tune with the latest trends and this shows in many different circumstances. Something as little as feeling the need for caffeine when you are around someone who has it means that you have also felt as if you must have something specific to be accepted by others.
