New studies show parents need a wakeup call to this growing epidemic
When I think about all the problems that our kids face today, I don’t include gambling as a threat. Previously I’ve written about the dangers on online games like ROBLOX, the rise of Sextortion cases in the US, and even the rise in anxiety and depression due to unhealthy social media exposure.
Now the silent epidemic that is growing among our sons is gambling.
A study by the non-profit organization Common Sense Media reports that 36% of teenage boys between the ages of eleven and seventeen have admitted to gambling in the past year. When looking at just the seventeen-year-old responses, a staggering 49% of seventeen-year-old boys have reported gambling in the past year.
Gambling is a silent and stealth addiction. We can be sitting next to our sons, or across from them in a restaurant and not know they are gambling. Why? Because so many of the gambling opportunities have gone mobile. As we sit in the booth waiting for our Texas Roadhouse rolls, our sons can be betting on anything, from specific pitches during a baseball game to how many times Elon Musk will post on X today. The access is wide open. And the betting opportunities are unlimited.
The gambling that our boys are participating in doesn’t happen at casinos or card tables. Addiction starts with video games. Most games today feature what is called a Loot Box. This is a virtual container in a video game store that when opened dispenses a random selection of in-game items. These can be weapons, character clothes, or special gear. A loot box can be earned though play or purchased with real money. But the gambling mechanic is clear; your son buys a loot box with the hope of securing something valuable.
Loot boxes have the same elements that make up any casino game: PAYMENT (the player puts up something of value), CHANCE (the outcome is randomized) and PRIZE (The distribution of something of value). You put your money down to win something valuable. Like money gambling, it’s a dopamine hit filled with uncertainty leading up to a reveal. Most loot boxes are built to convince you that you were “almost” or were “Oh! So Close!” to securing the most valuable items. This is a technique borrowed directly from casino slot machines.
Video game publishers say that since these items cannot be cashed out in the real world, it’s not gambling. But that’s avoiding the point. The mechanics of payment, chance and prize are training and normalizing a behavior that can become addicting to our kids. Currently no United States federal law bans or classifies loot boxes as gambling. Belgium and the Netherlands have banned paid loot boxes outright, and Brazil now bars loot box sales to minors. The EU’s proposed Digital Fairness Act could extend restrictions to games accessible to minors across Europe, though as of 2026, Austria’s high court ruled the opposite way, finding that loot boxes in games like FIFA do not constitute gambling. Why don’t we?
And the pipeline for our kids extends beyond video games. While kids are playing these games, nearly 60% of boys ages 11 to 17 encountered gambling content on YouTube, social media, and information pushed to them in their social media feeds.
Sites like Kalshi and Polymarket have opened up gambling opportunities beyond sports and games. From the home page on Polymarket I can place bets on a soccer game in the UK, how many tweets Elon Musk will post today, whether the temperature in London will hit a new yearly high, or who wins a political primary in an election primary.
Just sixty days ago, millions of dollars were bet on the results of the UFC fights that were staged on the White House lawn. Less than a decade ago, sports betting was illegal in all but a handful of states. Now it is normalized on our nation’s front lawn. This is a big problem.
Gambling has soared in the United States since a 2018 ruling by the Supreme Court allowed states to legalize sports betting. Since then, the number of states allowing online sports betting has grown from one to thirty-eight. American spending on sports betting has ballooned from $4.9 billion to $121 billion by 2023.
The scary part of this is nobody really knows how much of this money came from adults with legitimate accounts, minors with fraudulent accounts, or minors using their parental accounts. Teenagers are finding ways to get around the legal restrictions of being 18 and older.
It should be no surprise that the gambling surge among our teens is a losing proposition. Actual losses by American players on prediction markets total approximately half a billion dollars on Kalshi alone. A Bloomberg analysis /investigation discovered that more than 100,000 accounts have lost at least $1,000 on the app Polymarket. The Wall Street Journal reports that 67% of Polymarket profits go to just 0.1% of the accounts. A study by Northwestern Mutual found that 69% of accounts on these platforms end up losing money overall.
But the losses go far beyond financial. And here lies the permanent damage inflicted on our sons. A study of adolescents and young adults found that youth at risk of gambling reported significantly higher psychopathological distress and more dysfunctional coping strategies than their peers. Gambling disorder risk factors include depression, anxiety, and mood disorders. Researchers are now classifying gambling disorder in the same category as substance addiction. The short answer is that our kids can pay off the financial cost of this addiction. But the mental and psychological damage is longer lasting.
We used to think of gambling as something our kids would eventually experiment with: the occasional poker night at the college fraternity, maybe a weekend trip to Vegas or Atlantic City when they turn 21. But highly regulated casinos and on-site sports betting are no longer the on-ramps. The introduction to gambling is now a dopamine-engineered loot box in an innocent-looking video game. Our kids are exposed to the addiction loops when they are eleven. Gambling and dopamine-driven addiction loops are normalized on their phones, hooking them in by the time they’re old enough to drive. By eighteen, they’re a single tap away from a real-money account that looks and feels exactly like any other app on their phone.
Kalshi is spending big money on TikTok telling our kids how they can get rich just by predicting the weather. They’re telling our kids that prediction markets are easy money. Easier than getting a job. You can simply place a bet on any innocuous event and cash in big.
Until regulators and our lawmakers catch up, the burden falls on us. We need to talk to our sons about what’s actually happening inside these games before someone else or another company with a much bigger ad budget does it for us. The damage can be lasting.
