Contributed by Vedant Srinivasan
If your teenager has been constantly bugging you about creatine, maybe after scrolling through gym videos, talking to friends, or watching their favorite fitness influencer preach, you’re not alone. Creatine has become one of the hottest supplements among teens for its perceived positive effects on muscle growth. Recent studies have shown that creatine use among high schoolers has skyrocketed over the past several years, increasing by as much as 168%. Additionally, among teen athletes specifically, the numbers are consistently much higher.
What’s fueling this creatine craze?
Social media content glorifies gym culture and “looksmaxxing,” a viral trend in which young people seek to maximize their physical attractiveness through fitness and supplementation. This kind of content is heavily consumed by teens, helping to fuel the rising popularity of creatine and other supposed muscle-building agents.
Studies have found that exposure to fitness and supplement content on platforms like TikTok directly increases teens' intentions to use muscle-building supplements, with social comparison identified as the driving mechanism. Additionally, no major social media platform has specific rules governing posts that promote legal supplements like creatine, meaning teens are scrolling through this type of content with zero guardrails.
What is creatine? Where does it come from?
Creatine is a compound your body produces naturally in the liver, kidneys and pancreas. You also get it from foods like meat and fish. Creatine is primarily stored in skeletal muscle and plays a key role in energy metabolism. During short, explosive bursts of activity like sprinting or heavy lifting, your muscles burn through energy very quickly, and creatine helps replenish that energy faster. It allows your muscles to sustain effort longer before fatiguing.
In studies done with adults,taking creatine as a supplement has been shown to significantly boost muscle stores beyond what diet and the body alone provide. However, teens are still growing and developing, so the extent to which a supplement like this helps with their muscle growth and health is unknown.
Is taking creatine safe?
In adults, the current evidence supports creatine as a safe and effective supplement when consumed within the advised dosing range. Several analyses have found no significant side effects attributable to creatine, and common online claims about kidney damage, dehydration and muscle cramping are not supported by research.
When comparing individuals who take creatine and resistance train versus individuals who just resistance train, the difference in muscle gained comes out to roughly one to two pounds over the course of a few months, given consistent training, adequate protein intake, sufficient calories and good sleep. In other words, taking creatine alone does not “build muscle” as a substitute for exercise, but rather modestly enhances the muscle-building effects of a consistent training program.
Should teens take creatine to reach their goals of increased muscle growth?
When it comes to teenagers and creatine use, the honest answer is that we don’t really know yet. Compared to the wealth of information we have for adults, there’s actually very little research that examines the effects of creatine use in adolescents. Only a handful of small studies exist, and none of them was designed to evaluate safety.
While current evidence does suggest that creatine is likely safe for teens, we simply don’t know enough about how it supports or hurts a developing human body. Plus, there are serious questions about product quality. Unlike medications, dietary supplements like creatine aren’t regulated by the FDA, meaning what’s listed on the label may not always represent what’s in the bottle. You could run the risk of not getting your money’s worth, or consuming contaminants you didn’t know were in there. It adds an extra burden upon you as the consumer to determine that the supplement you’re taking is actually what you think it is.
Creatine isn’t a magical muscle builder. It will not transform your physique, and, especially in teenagers, the evidence of meaningful muscle-building effects is not there. Of the very limited studies that have been conducted in teen athletes, some show slight improvements in performance, while others show no significant differences. After beginning creatine supplementation, rapid initial weight gain is very common. Many people attribute this to supercharged muscle growth. But in reality, this is just due to increased water retention (sorry folks). Creatine can’t build muscle – only exercise and weight training can do that. If you aren’t putting in the work while taking creatine, it’s not helping you much.
So what can teens do to build muscle?
What the research consistently shows, regardless of how old you are, is that the fundamentals of training hard and consistently, eating balanced meals with enough protein, and sleeping well are vastly more important and effective for muscle growth than taking any supplement.
At best, creatine may provide a small boost if and only if used on top of an already healthy lifestyle. With all the unknowns currently surrounding creatine in teens – and supplements costing you upwards of eighteen bucks a month – the tried and tested methods may just be your smartest move.
References
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41905190/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5469049/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0972978X2300065X
Contributed by Vedant Srinivasan
If your teenager has been constantly bugging you about creatine, maybe after scrolling through gym videos, talking to friends, or watching their favorite fitness influencer preach, you’re not alone. Creatine has become one of the hottest supplements among teens for its perceived positive effects on muscle growth. Recent studies have shown that creatine use among high schoolers has skyrocketed over the past several years, increasing by as much as 168%. Additionally, among teen athletes specifically, the numbers are consistently much higher.
What’s fueling this creatine craze?
Social media content glorifies gym culture and “looksmaxxing,” a viral trend in which young people seek to maximize their physical attractiveness through fitness and supplementation. This kind of content is heavily consumed by teens, helping to fuel the rising popularity of creatine and other supposed muscle-building agents.
Studies have found that exposure to fitness and supplement content on platforms like TikTok directly increases teens' intentions to use muscle-building supplements, with social comparison identified as the driving mechanism. Additionally, no major social media platform has specific rules governing posts that promote legal supplements like creatine, meaning teens are scrolling through this type of content with zero guardrails.
What is creatine? Where does it come from?
Creatine is a compound your body produces naturally in the liver, kidneys and pancreas. You also get it from foods like meat and fish. Creatine is primarily stored in skeletal muscle and plays a key role in energy metabolism. During short, explosive bursts of activity like sprinting or heavy lifting, your muscles burn through energy very quickly, and creatine helps replenish that energy faster. It allows your muscles to sustain effort longer before fatiguing.
In studies done with adults,taking creatine as a supplement has been shown to significantly boost muscle stores beyond what diet and the body alone provide. However, teens are still growing and developing, so the extent to which a supplement like this helps with their muscle growth and health is unknown.
Is taking creatine safe?
In adults, the current evidence supports creatine as a safe and effective supplement when consumed within the advised dosing range. Several analyses have found no significant side effects attributable to creatine, and common online claims about kidney damage, dehydration and muscle cramping are not supported by research.
When comparing individuals who take creatine and resistance train versus individuals who just resistance train, the difference in muscle gained comes out to roughly one to two pounds over the course of a few months, given consistent training, adequate protein intake, sufficient calories and good sleep. In other words, taking creatine alone does not “build muscle” as a substitute for exercise, but rather modestly enhances the muscle-building effects of a consistent training program.
Should teens take creatine to reach their goals of increased muscle growth?
When it comes to teenagers and creatine use, the honest answer is that we don’t really know yet. Compared to the wealth of information we have for adults, there’s actually very little research that examines the effects of creatine use in adolescents. Only a handful of small studies exist, and none of them was designed to evaluate safety.
While current evidence does suggest that creatine is likely safe for teens, we simply don’t know enough about how it supports or hurts a developing human body. Plus, there are serious questions about product quality. Unlike medications, dietary supplements like creatine aren’t regulated by the FDA, meaning what’s listed on the label may not always represent what’s in the bottle. You could run the risk of not getting your money’s worth, or consuming contaminants you didn’t know were in there. It adds an extra burden upon you as the consumer to determine that the supplement you’re taking is actually what you think it is.
Creatine isn’t a magical muscle builder. It will not transform your physique, and, especially in teenagers, the evidence of meaningful muscle-building effects is not there. Of the very limited studies that have been conducted in teen athletes, some show slight improvements in performance, while others show no significant differences. After beginning creatine supplementation, rapid initial weight gain is very common. Many people attribute this to supercharged muscle growth. But in reality, this is just due to increased water retention (sorry folks). Creatine can’t build muscle – only exercise and weight training can do that. If you aren’t putting in the work while taking creatine, it’s not helping you much.
So what can teens do to build muscle?
What the research consistently shows, regardless of how old you are, is that the fundamentals of training hard and consistently, eating balanced meals with enough protein, and sleeping well are vastly more important and effective for muscle growth than taking any supplement.
At best, creatine may provide a small boost if and only if used on top of an already healthy lifestyle. With all the unknowns currently surrounding creatine in teens – and supplements costing you upwards of eighteen bucks a month – the tried and tested methods may just be your smartest move.
References
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41905190/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5469049/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0972978X2300065X
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