By Karim Hammam
A new national survey from Rutgers University reveals that nearly half of American teenagers aged 13 to 17 gambled in the past year, with 11 percent classified as high-risk for gambling disorders.
Survey Details
The study surveyed 1,677 adolescents and found that 43 percent placed bets across 21 gambling activities, including sports and esports betting, cryptocurrency trading, games of skill, raffles, bingo, and prediction markets. Researchers said this marks the first national prevalence study of U.S. adolescents and young adults in nearly two decades.
Rising Risks
"These findings should be a wake-up call for parents, educators, health professionals and policymakers," said Lia Nower, director of Rutgers' Center for Gambling Studies, who led the research. She noted that gambling is increasingly embedded in video games, sports broadcasts, and other products accessible to young people, driving up problem gambling rates among youth.
Demographic Disparities
The study identified that Black teens, those from lower-income households, and adolescents with family members who gamble were the most likely to participate. Additional research cited shows young men are 3.4 times more likely than young women to engage in problematic gambling, though high-risk rates were similar for girls in the Rutgers survey.
Online Expansion
Around 90 percent of bets are now placed on phones, a shift accelerated by the Supreme Court's May 2018 ruling that legalized sports betting. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health linked that expansion to increased use of depression and anxiety medications and a surge in outpatient mental health diagnoses in states with legal sports betting.
Policy Recommendations
Nower and the university recommended starting prevention education in middle school, strengthening oversight of emerging gambling-like products, establishing a federal regulatory agency to set safeguards, and creating a new office for problem gambling within the National Institutes of Health to target prevention and treatment where risk is highest.
People struggling with a gambling disorder can call the National Problem Gambling Helpline at 1-800-MY-RESET, or call or text 988 in a crisis.
