Study: UI students drinking less alcohol, more energy drinks

IOWA CITY — University of Iowa undergraduate and graduate students have made modest improvements across a range of health determinants over the last two years — from alcohol and marijuana use and abuse to anxiety and suicidal ideation.

But some of the metrics remain worse than a decade ago in 2015 — including a variety of stressors, like finances and personal appearance. Where 58 percent of UI respondents in 2025 listed appearance as a top stressor and 42 percent listed finances, just 23 percent said appearance was a stressor a decade ago and 29 percent were stressed about finances.

“Ultimately, the data reinforce the critical need to continue prioritizing health and well-being as foundational elements of student success,” according to a report on the University of Iowa’s spring 2025 college health assessment, conducted between late February and mid-March.

Although all 21,346 UI undergraduate and 7,832 graduate and professional students were invited to take the online survey seeking information about their drug and alcohol use, academic impediments, sleep patterns, and sexual activity, just 1,530 undergrads and 962 graduate and professional students did — amounting to a 7 percent and 12 percent response rate, respectively.

While the rates are low, the numbers are triple the small sample of 569 UI students polled a decade ago — before it was offered to every student.

And, as one of 96 campuses that surveyed their students in the spring — including 47,194 students and 19 campuses in the Midwest — the UI can monitor how its students are faring compared to national averages.

For example, UI students are more likely to get seven to nine hours of sleep on weeknights and more likely to report feeling like they belong at their institution; they’re also more likely to drink and smoke and consume energy drinks.

Energy drinks

Energy drink consumption has soared at the University of Iowa since the health survey started tracking it in 2021 — when 9 percent of respondents said they had an energy drink or shot at least five days in the last month. That more than doubled in 2023 to 21 percent, and jumped another 52 percent in the 2025 survey to 32 percent.

Nationally, 18.5 percent in the spring 2025 survey reported consuming an energy drink or shot on five or more days — close to half the percent reported in the UI survey.

At the graduate level, 17 percent of UI respondents reported consuming the drinks — up from 12 percent in 2023 and 6 percent in 2021.

“The energy drink market has grown exponentially over the past two decades and is anticipated to grow at 8.2 percent over the 2020—2027 period,” according to a 2022 study out of the American Public University System. “The surge, in part, resulted from successful marketing to a target population of young adults between the ages of 18-24 years — the younger Millennials and now Gen Z, many of whom are college students.”

Those research studies have associated energy drink consumption with adverse side effects involving sleep and anxiety. In the most recent 2025 report, 43 percent of respondents reported being diagnosed with anxiety and 31 percent said they’ve been diagnosed with depression.

Anxiety

A decade ago, 11 percent of students had been diagnosed or treated for anxiety and 8 percent for depression — percentages that spiked post-pandemic in 2021 to 34 percent with anxiety and 27 percent with depression, according to the UI report from that year.

Even with more distance from the pandemic’s peak, UI student anxieties appear to have lingered — with 81 percent listing stress or anxiety as an academic impediment in 2025, compared with 48.5 percent who did a decade ago.

In the most recent study, 23 percent listed depression as an academic impediment, where 9.5 percent did a decade ago.

But alcohol use and abuse metrics are moving in a more measured direction — with 69 percent of 2025 respondents using alcohol in the last 30 days, down from 74 percent a decade ago and nearly 90 percent in 1999, according to past reports. Where 39 percent of UI undergraduate respondents said they smoked cigarettes 25 years ago and 29 percent said they had used marijuana in the last 30 days, those percentages have ebbed in recent years.

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Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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