Young Brains Beware

a congressional report released this year excoriated those companies and others for continuing to market to teenagers, whose brains and bodies are not yet fully developed.

Dr. Marcie Schneider, an adolescent-medicine specialist in Greenwich, Conn., worries that most parents do not recognize the dangers of the [energy] drinks.

“I feel like we have a better sense of how many kids are smoking pot than how many kids are using energy drinks,” Dr. Schneider said. She was one of two lead authors of a study for the American Academy of Pediatrics that recommended that children and adolescents should never consume energy drinks because of caffeine’s potential to disturb sleeping patterns, increase heart rates and slow brain development.