NEW YORK – One night in April, nearly 100 bikini-clad sauna patrons descended on Othership Flatiron, a sauna and ice bath spa that has become an Instagrammable landmark in New York City’s wellness scene.
Inside, a DJ plays house music as participants slip a small white bag between their gums and lips, moving between a 32-degree plunge and a cedar sauna. Palm-sized plastic containers are neatly lined up on the counter.
The blue raspberry and fruit punch flavored pouches contained no nicotine. The event is hosted by Wip, a startup that develops flavored “energy pouches.” These products are part of the fast-growing category of caffeine pouches, which are marketed as trendier, cheaper, and more discreet alternatives to coffee, energy drinks, and pre-workout powders. In recent months, pouches have been mentioned on social media for a while, but they have started to appear more frequently in the wellness sector and social environments.
Many brands, including Wip, say these products are intended for adults only, but experts who study youth behavior point out that they’re also entering the teen lexicon as more young people talk about these pouches both online and offline.
“The appeal is that it’s easy to hide,” said Bonnie Halpern Felscher, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University who studies tobacco, alcohol and marijuana use among adolescents. “There are concerns. We don’t want young people to become addicted to it and use it excessively.”
Caffeine products have no federal age restrictions, so anyone can purchase them. Halpern Felsher, who lectures to teachers and parents about youth tobacco use, said she now regularly receives questions about caffeine pouches.
“Educators and even parents are concerned and have seen adolescents and young adults using caffeinated pouches,” she says.
What does the rise in caffeine pouches mean for young people?
These products are starting to replace energy drinks in bars, offices, and gyms. Companies offer pouches ranging from 50 milligrams to 225 milligrams. For comparison, a 12-ounce cup of coffee contains about 136 milligrams of caffeine. Red Bull contains 114 milligrams.
The FDA recommends limiting caffeine intake to less than 400 milligrams per day. However, a recent viral video shows young people doubling down on caffeine pouches, sometimes ingesting 400 milligrams in a single use.
Rob Van Dam, a professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health who studies caffeine, says consumers often become more conscious of their caffeine intake when they end up drinking multiple cups of coffee or soda. He points out that it’s easier to take high doses in pouch format.
Also, drinks take longer to absorb, but when the pouch is administered between the gums and cheek, it is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream.
“It’s very confusing how much caffeine you’re consuming in total because there are so many different sources,” he says. “It’s easy to fall into a pattern of consuming too much caffeine.”
Influencers use social media to promote these caffeine products, often posting videos peppered with slang terms popular among teens and young adults, such as “upper deck” and “lip pillow.” Some people liken this product to a nicotine pouch and call it “caffeine gin.” Looking at the comments and TikTok videos, it’s clear that both young adults and teens are trying out this pouch.
“You don’t have to be 21…” one user wrote in a video with a link to a Rebel energy pouch, lamenting that he waited until he was 21 to try Zyns when “you could literally get it from the TikTok shop at any age.” “Literally, this got me through high school,” the 19-year-old promoting the LyvWel Caffeine Pouch captioned the video.
Sophia Leonard, an 18-year-old fitness influencer and University of Miami freshman who uses caffeine pouches, said many young people who watch promotional content “don’t really know what they’re putting in their bodies.”
Leonard said the caffeine pouches help her track her intake, and she promotes Wip in affiliate posts on her TikTok shop. But he cautioned that young people interested in the product should be careful how they use it. She says her brother, a high school student, asked her about caffeinated pouches.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, I saw this influencer doing this, so I’m going to try it,'” Leonard says. “They look at those things and say, ‘Oh, this is so cool.'”
Critics point to the overlap between the nicotine and caffeine pouch industries. Wip CEO Richard Munby was previously chief marketing officer at e-cigarette maker Juul, which ultimately agreed to pay $462 million to settle allegations that it sold its products to underage vapers.
Wipes distanced itself from the comparison to nicotine pouches, emphasizing that its product is not intended for nicotine cessation.
Nora Minno, Wip’s director of nutrition, regulatory and product communications, says that while the slang terms for these pouches and nicotine pouches may overlap, that’s all they have in common.
“When describing something new, people often default to their most familiar reference point, in the same way that ‘Kleenex’ became an abbreviation for tissues,” Mino says. “In this case, some consumers may use the general nicotine pouch terminology as a reference point to describe the form factor, and specifically refer to the brand name ‘Zyn’ for pouches in general.”
The rise of caffeine pouches
The modern caffeine pouch category dates back to 2009, when Grind introduced coffee-infused oral pouches marketed as a cigarette alternative for baseball players. But it’s only in the last five years that these pouches have started to gain traction, Halpernfelscher said.
These increases coincide with a boom in nicotine pouch products led by Zyn, which became the first and only approved nicotine pouch product in the United States after the Food and Drug Administration cleared it for sale in January 2025.
Companies that have long offered tobacco alternatives, such as Smoky Mountain Chews, have helped pouches penetrate the wellness space by adding pouches to their lineups and launching additional brands in 2024 and 2025. By 2026, dozens of pouch products have appeared on the market.
Some users say the pouches have helped them curb their caffeine addiction.
Daniel Bird, a 23-year-old fitness influencer, says the pouches will appeal to athletes looking for an alternative to energy drinks and pre-workout powders, as high caffeine intake becomes the norm in the fitness industry.
In college, Byrd had a habit of drinking two Monster Energy drinks before class, using pre-workout powder late at night before training, and sometimes consuming more than 1,000 milligrams of caffeine per day. This is roughly equivalent to 10 cups of coffee.
She said the caffeine pouches allow her to keep her daily caffeine intake close to 600 milligrams. Her sister works a 9-to-5 job and doesn’t get enough exercise, but she uses the pouch to help her concentrate at work.
“Pre-workouts in the past have made me so frustrated that I’ve collapsed right after the workout,” Bird says. “These were more consistent energies, but then slowly faded away.”
Young people and when caffeine intake becomes dangerous
Experts say there is little data on how many young people have used caffeine pouches, raising concerns about caffeine addiction among young people.
According to a study by Epic Research, between 2017 and 2023, the rate of emergency room visits for caffeine-related problems among children ages 11 to 14 more than doubled.
In 2022, a 21-year-old student went into cardiac arrest and died after drinking Panera Bread’s highly caffeinated Charged Lemonade drink. The family of a 17-year-old cheerleader who died of cardiomyopathy also claims in a wrongful death lawsuit that her heart disease was caused by drinking Alani Nu’s caffeinated beverage.
David Gomez, a school resource officer with the Boise County Sheriff’s Office in Idaho, said students have asked him if it’s legal to bring caffeinated pouches to school. That’s a concern, but he points out that energy drinks are still the most worrying.
“We see sixth-graders coming in with giant energy drinks, and many of them drink one in the morning and one in the afternoon to get through school,” Gomez said.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under 12 not consume caffeine, and suggests a limit of 100 milligrams per day for teenagers. But as caffeine becomes more widely available in the form of energy drinks and pre-workout powders, experts worry that pouches will become even more prevalent.
Caffeine misuse can increase heart rate and blood pressure and reduce sleep quality, Van Dam said, but added that usage patterns are also important.
Van Dam said it’s OK for teens to drink coffee and tea, but he doesn’t recommend using pouches because they are concentrated and can easily exceed recommended limits.
He said young people using the product should be aware of the various formats on the label and track their total caffeine use for the day.
“While it may be safe, you need to think twice to understand exactly how much you are consuming and what impact it may have on your health,” he added.
Rachel Hale’s role covering youth mental health for USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Contact her at rhale@usatoday.com. @rachleighhale With X.
