Today’s youth are more proactive with their identities these days than we were. We were and remain reactive with our identities. That preference influences what triggers the dopamine hits needed for life.
The drugs of a reactive identity culture are sugar, alcohol, narcotics, work, anything that’s a trope in movies made by boomers. These drugs have consequences that shape the user’s identity. For example: weight gain or burnout.
But the drugs of a proactive identity culture are those that drive the person’s perception of their identity. The live ahead of the consequences. Things like digital social networks, status symbols like shoes, colleges, or jobs, and anything that drives success in those status symbols. Example: Adderall helps the user study, which helps the user get better grades, which opens the door to a better college, which allows the user to flaunt that college association as part of their identity. That doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences to those drugs but those consequences aren’t tropes of modern life just yet because we’re still normalizing their outcomes.
All of this to say: sodas aren’t their thing because soda is “unhealthy” and that drags on their identity.