Something changed in high school locker rooms and weight rooms between 2019 and 2024. Steroid use among American teenagers — long a concern for coaches, parents, and pediatricians — did not increase, and in some metrics declined. What surged in its place was creatine: legal, affordable, heavily promoted on social media, and used by nearly one in six American teenage boys by 2024.
A study tracking more than 870,000 adolescents over two decades, reported by HealthDay on May 20, 2026, found that creatine use among adolescents climbed from 6.29% overall in 2019 to 9.68% in 2024. Among boys, usage doubled — from 8.71% to 16.57%. Among girls, it more than doubled, from 1.22% to 3.27%. The researchers, who analyzed data from the Monitoring the Future survey tracking 8th, 10th, and 12th graders across the United States, found that the shift toward creatine tracked with the decline in steroid use — suggesting a behavioral substitution toward legal, over-the-counter alternatives that promise similar body composition benefits without the legal and health stigma of anabolic steroids.
