Online Gambling Has Entered the Chat

Kids know a lot about it, so you should, too.

AI-generated gambling graphic

A lot of folks are talking about online gambling right now, and if you aren’t, you should be.

When I asked my high school students at the start of the year which media literacy topics they most wanted to explore, online gambling was the first thing out of their mouths. In my experience, one of the best things about teaching media literacy is that students are excited to talk about these topics, and they tend to overshare, so I learn a lot. With regard to gambling, kids see it everywhere: in their feeds, during the games they watch, and in the content their favorite creators post. It comes up frequently and in many ways.

I was surprised again when I recently started a unit on online gambling, and in our first discussion, every single one of my students could name someone in their lives they thought was “way too into” online gambling - as in, that person might have a problem. My students were well-versed on how to place a sports bet, even the ones who weren’t old enough to legally do so. And when I asked how they thought about it, the framing wasn’t “I know I shouldn’t” or even “it’s a risk.” It was: “This is a great way to make money on the side,” or “Actually, I’m really good at it.”

These teenagers are describing an activity with a 37% self-reported addiction rate among their generation as a side hustle.

It was clear that online gambling had become normal for these kids, which made the usual warnings from adults feel irrelevant.

The same adults telling kids to be careful are watching sports broadcasts saturated with DraftKings ads, placing Super Bowl bets, opening March Madness brackets in school-sanctioned office pools, and treating prediction markets like a hobby. We have legalized, advertised, gamified, and socially normalized gambling at a scale and speed that no generation of young people has ever been exposed to, and then we wonder why it’s becoming a problem for them.

What It Looks Like in a Classroom

In our unit on online gambling, I ran a game with my students. Each of them started with tokens they could either save or spend, and at the end of class, tokens could be exchanged for prizes I’d set up in advance. Something small like candy, something medium like a homework pass, or something ridiculous like making a teacher sing “I’m a little teapot” in a silly hat of their choosing (for those of you who aren’t in education, you might not realize how much high schoolers would want this ‘prize’).

But they could also spend tokens during the game to try to win more. I kept a timer running the entire time and built in moments of near-miss and FOMO through limited-time opportunities. I let the sunk cost fallacy do its work naturally: once students had already spent several tokens chasing a big prize, walking away felt like a waste.

A couple of students were cautious from the start, protecting their tokens and willing to accept a smaller guaranteed prize; the majority went all in. They spent token after token, chasing the thrill of the big win, ignoring the timer, riding out near-misses with the conviction that they were due to win any moment. Watching their individual approaches, I could see personality differences, impulsivity, loss aversion, and sensation-seeking playing out in real time.

The debrief after the game was what got me thinking about writing this post.

When we talked through what had happened, students could name the psychological concepts perfectly. They identified the sunk cost fallacy and the feeling they had in the moment. They recognized FOMO. They could describe the near-miss effect. They understood, intellectually, exactly how the system had been designed to work on them.

And then many of them said, "But I liked it. I knew what was happening, but I chose to keep going. Nothing was manipulating me.”

To be clear, these kids aren’t ignorant, despite what one might think about that response. It is actually the most important thing to understand about how these systems work, and an important reminder that media literacy education alone is not enough for conversations about online gambling.

The feeling that you are choosing freely is not evidence that you are choosing freely. It is, in fact, a feature of how these systems are designed.

The brain’s reward circuitry does not distinguish cleanly between “I want this” and “I have been conditioned to want this.”

Dopamine, the chemical involved in anticipation and reward, is released more powerfully in response to variable rewards than to predictable ones. This is the mechanism behind slot machines, loot boxes, gacha pulls, and the classroom game I ran. The unpredictable reward is the product.

This relevant psychological framework is called variable-ratio reinforcement, identified by B.F. Skinner, as the most resistant-to-extinction behavior that exists. Animals and humans will repeat a behavior almost compulsively when the reward is unpredictable. Fixed rewards produce much weaker persistence. The “not knowing when” is what hooks people, and it is why we can engage with these systems and genuinely feel in control while they are doing exactly what they were engineered to do.

My cautious students are worth noting, too. Research suggests that the minority who hold back tend to have higher baseline loss aversion, which is a bias toward avoiding losses more strongly than seeking equivalent gains. That’s not necessarily showing a specific student’s wisdom or willpower in the moment, but rather it’s a different cognitive default. The fact that it correlated with personality in my room is consistent with what the literature shows: individual differences in impulsivity and sensation-seeking genuinely predict gambling behavior, and some of those traits have heritable components.

The students who said “I liked it and I was choosing it” weren’t wrong. They were describing a real subjective experience. But enjoyment and manipulation are not mutually exclusive. The game was designed to be enjoyable by exploiting specific psychological vulnerabilities, which is not the same as a moral failing or a lack of willpower.

How We Got Here, Fast

In Murphy v. NCAA (2018), the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting, opening the door for states to legalize it. Most did. By 2025, it was legal in 38 states, with revenue growing from $248 million to over $13.7 billion annually.

This growth was as much cultural as it was business. DraftKings and FanDuel became embedded in broadcasts, banner ads, and sponsors for many iconic events that young people tune in to see. Celebrity deals, including Drake and xQc with Stake, turned gambling into lifestyle content. Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket reframed it as “forecasting” or “investing,” terms that carry positive, lucrative, and status associations.

Adults have largely accepted this change in the acceptance of gambling. Over half of U.S. men ages 18 to 49 now have an online sportsbook account, and the number is still rising.

The Pipeline Into Youth Culture

My first teaching job in the early 2000s was in Las Vegas. I remember the discussions and research happening at the time about what it meant for children to grow up in proximity to gambling, whether being immersed in that environment normalized betting in ways that followed kids into adulthood. The findings were sobering even then. Research presented at a national conference on problem gambling in Las Vegas in 2000 found that by age 10, 79% of children had already gambled compared to 37% who had tried alcohol, 18% who had smoked, and just 3.5% who had used drugs. Pathological gambling was estimated to affect up to 6% of minors, roughly four times its rate in adults. Some of my students worked at the casinos after school, washing dishes or parking cars, existing in the orbit of an industry that shaped how their families lived. The worry then was that physical proximity to gambling normalized it.

That worry was well-founded. But today, children do not arrive at gambling by walking past a casino floor. Today, they get there through a pipeline that follows them everywhere, built on behavioral data, targeted advertising, and algorithmic content that finds them whether they’re looking for it or not. The casino comes to them.

The research on what this exposure does to kids is sobering. A large-scale survey of over 7,400 gamers found a significant relationship between the amount spent on loot boxes and the severity of problem gambling, a relationship stronger than observed links between problem gambling and depression or drug use, and comparable in strength to problem gambling and alcohol dependence. The study could not determine the direction of causation, whether loot boxes may contribute to gambling problems, existing problem gamblers may be drawn to loot boxes, or both, but the authors concluded that regulation is warranted regardless.

That cross-sectional finding is reinforced by longitudinal evidence. A study of over 4,600 people drawn from the Norwegian general population found that problem gaming scores significantly predicted problem gambling scores two years later, while the reverse relationship was not statistically significant.

Video gaming problems appear to function as a gateway to gambling problems, not the other way around.

Content is the next exposure point. Nearly half (45%) of adolescent boys who gamble report viewing gambling videos or streams online, and critically, 59% say this content simply showed up in their feed without them searching for it. Among boys who watch gambling content, average annual spending on gambling is more than double that of non-viewers ($72 vs. $33). It’s worth noting that the Common Sense Media data focuses specifically on adolescent boys, where gambling research has historically been concentrated. The gender gap in gambling is real but narrowing in younger cohorts. Girls are not exempt from this pipeline; they are underrepresented in research but not in risk. Gambling influencers and streamers produce “entertainment” that is functionally advertising. For younger viewers, the distinction between a genuine endorsement and a paid promotion is nearly invisible.

Then come the apps themselves. The legal gambling age is 18 or 21, depending on the state and platform, but age verification online is largely ineffective, and many underage sports gamblers report using a family member’s account. Six in ten boys (61%) have seen gambling ads on YouTube, 60% on social media, and 57% during live or streaming sports broadcasts. The gambling marketing machine is obvious everywhere kids show up online.

Advertising to Kids

While cigarette advertising on television was banned in 1971, and alcohol advertising is at least guided by industry codes that acknowledge the risks of marketing addictive products to minors, gambling ads remain widespread on platforms that minors regularly use. Why is that?

I bet you can guess.

Gambling companies use the same digital advertising infrastructure as every other major advertiser: programmatic ad buying, behavioral targeting, data broker audience profiles, and lookalike modeling. A teenager who watches sports content, follows gaming influencers, plays fantasy-adjacent games, or simply lives in a household where adults use betting apps generates a data profile.

That profile gets packaged by data brokers, purchased by gambling advertisers, and used to serve targeted content or modify their behavior in order to sell them things. Often, without any meaningful check on whether the person receiving it is legally old enough to gamble.

Platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat have policies meant to keep gambling ads away from minors, but those policies depend entirely on accurate age data, which is notoriously unreliable. Kids routinely enter false birthdates to create accounts (a topic for another post, but parents: allowing this sends a terrible message). Algorithms then infer age from behavior rather than actually verifying it. And most importantly, the incentive structure only runs one way: toward more ad revenue, not less.

There is a second pathway that bypasses ad targeting restrictions entirely: influencer and creator content. When a gambling company pays a creator to produce content promoting its platform, that content is served by the platform’s recommendation algorithm rather than purchased as a display ad, which means it often falls outside the ad policy guardrails altogether. When 59% of boys who see gambling content say it simply appeared in their feed without them looking for it, this is largely the mechanism at work. The algorithm does not distinguish between an ad and content because it optimizes for engagement. Gambling content, with its built-in excitement and aspirational framing (unsurprisingly), performs well.

The tobacco comparison is an appropriate policy frame. The argument that drove cigarette advertising restrictions in the 1970s and 1990s was straightforward: a legal product for adults should not be marketed using mass media in ways that normalize it for developing brains. That argument applies with equal force to sports betting today, and the targeting infrastructure now is orders of magnitude more precise and invasive than anything the tobacco industry had access to in 1995. In 1990, a tobacco company could buy a billboard near a school. In 2026, a gambling company can buy a data-broker audience segment of teenage sports fans and serve them personalized content on the device in their pocket.

There is currently no federal standard governing gambling advertising to minors, equivalent to the weak voluntary codes that govern alcohol marketing. Most states that legalized sports betting put minimal advertising restrictions in their enabling legislation because tax revenue dominated the conversation, and the harm to young people was treated as someone else’s problem. The major sportsbooks participate in a voluntary “responsible gambling” framework through the American Gaming Association, but it is self-policed and largely unenforced.

This is a serious problem with some clear policy solutions. The SAFE Bet Act, currently before Congress, includes provisions on advertising standards. The FTC has authority under existing law to pursue unfair and deceptive practices in gambling-adjacent gaming features, as its 2025 enforcement action against Genshin Impact demonstrated. The EU has moved further than the US in both data-broker regulation and gambling advertising restrictions, providing a roadmap. And there are plenty of high-quality plans and ideas to limit gambling exposure to minors. Unfortunately, it is political will and public pressure that are missing, which is exactly what parents and educators are positioned to supply.

What the Data Actually Shows

We are no longer speculating about harm caused by proximity to and continuous normalization of online gambling for young people. The evidence base is substantial and growing.

Among sports bettors overall, 23% describe themselves as addicted. Among Gen Z specifically, that figure rises to 37%, which is fourteen percentage points higher than any other demographic. A separate clinical analysis found that college students develop gambling problems at roughly twice the rate of the general adult population, and that gambling disorder in young people is associated with academic decline, financial crisis, strained relationships, depression, and one of the highest suicide attempt rates among behavioral addictions.

More than a third of boys ages 11–17 (36%) report gambling in the past year, rising to 49% among 17-year-olds. Among boys whose friends mostly or all gamble, that participation rate climbs to 84%.

The financial consequences extend well beyond individual gamblers. A UCLA/USC study tracking data from 2018 to 2023 found that bankruptcy filings increased 28% in states that legalized online sports betting, with debt collections up 8% and credit scores declining. The harm was disproportionately concentrated among young, low-income men. A March 2026 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that within 18 months of legalization, credit delinquency rates among adults aged 21 to 39 rose by an average of 8.7% relative to states where betting remained prohibited, with effects crossing state lines through cross-border app use and advertising.

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The “Is This Gambling?” Problem

The gambling industry has spent decades rebranding its products. Fantasy sports are now evidence of “skill,” according to my students and everyone else. Prediction markets are “forecasting.” Loot boxes were once called “surprise mechanics” by EA Sports. Crypto is now “investing.” My students also call sports betting a “side hustle.” About one in four Gen Z gamblers considers gambling to be an investment, a rate far higher than older generations. This is a clear success of deliberate marketing.

A simple four-part test cuts through the rebranding, though, and can help answer the question: Is this gambling? I use this list to teach my students to recognize gambling, which is the first step to making an informed choice:

• Did I put something of real value at risk? (Consideration)

• Is the outcome at least partly determined by chance? (Chance)

• Is there something of value to win? (Prize)

• Was this designed to make me want to keep going? (Variable reward loop)

A note on question one, because students push back on this one every time: “real value” does not mean actual money. It means anything you spent real money to acquire, anything that took meaningful time or effort to earn, or anything that holds value to you or others, even if it exists only inside a game. Robux (Roblox currency) costs real dollars. V-Bucks cost real dollars. Skins can be traded or sold. Time is a resource. If you paid for it, earned it, or would be upset to lose it, it has value. The “it’s not real money” framing is actually what these systems are designed to make you believe, because the moment spending feels abstract, the psychological brakes come off.

If the answer to all four questions is yes, you are in gambling territory, legally or psychologically, regardless of what it’s called.

The first three questions are the standard legal framework on which most gambling regulation is built. The fourth is what distinguishes a one-time bet from a system engineered for compulsion. Researchers have described loot box systems as sharing important structural and psychological similarities with gambling in how they sustain engagement. My classroom gambling game has the same architecture, and the industry version has had billions of dollars and decades of behavioral research poured into it.

What Parents & Teachers Need to Be Doing

In the same way we talk explicitly, regularly, and honestly with young people about their online lives, including misinformation, plagiarism, cyberbullying, and porn and sex, we need to be talking to them about gambling, too.

Start talking about gambling before it feels urgent. Fewer than half of adolescent boys (45%) say their families have rules about gambling or game-related spending, and one in three boys has never discussed gambling with a parent at all. When parental conversations do happen, they tend to be reactive. Boys who had already gambled were significantly more likely to have had these conversations than non-gamblers, suggesting most parents are responding rather than getting ahead of the issue.

Name what you’re seeing in your own behavior. This is the uncomfortable part of “do as I say, not as I do.” If you bet on sports, place fantasy wagers, buy lottery tickets, or use prediction markets, you can still have this conversation, but you’ll have it better if you’re honest about what you’re doing and why. One-third of boys (34%) have gambled with family members, most commonly through lottery tickets or fantasy-style contests, and boys who gamble with family are significantly more likely to gamble independently as well. If problematic gambling is close to your family, talk about that, too.

Teach the mechanics, not just the risks. My students could name sunk cost fallacy and FOMO perfectly, and yet they still didn’t think they were being manipulated. That’s an important lesson. In this case, knowing the name of a psychological trap does not automatically protect you from it. What helps is repeated practice applying that knowledge to real decisions, in low-stakes environments, before the stakes are real. That’s what media literacy education is actually for.

Distinguish between the different entry points. Loot boxes, fantasy sports, prediction markets, meme stocks, crypto speculation, and sports betting apps are not the same thing, and treating them identically in conversation can undermine your credibility with older kids who know the differences. Use the four-part test to work through each one together. The productive conversation is not "is this bad" but "which of these four elements are present, and what does that mean for how I engage with it."

Pay attention to peer influence. Boys whose friends mostly or all gamble show a participation rate of 84%, compared to 17% among boys with no gambling friends. Peer involvement also predicts watching more gambling content, spending more, and diversifying into multiple forms of gambling. This doesn’t mean forbidding friendships (and good luck trying that anyway), it means helping young people develop critical awareness of how peer norms shape their own behavior.

Audit how your kids’ data is being used. Most parents don’t think about data brokers when it comes to their child’s online safety, but they should. The same data ecosystem that serves your teenager's gambling ads is also building a profile that will follow them into adulthood, influencing what financial products they’re offered, what insurance they’re quoted, and what content continues to find them. Checking privacy settings on platforms, using ad blockers, deleting online information, and having explicit conversations about how behavioral data is collected and sold are now part of digital literacy education.

Advocate on the policy side. Individual media literacy, unfortunately, cannot completely solve a systemic problem. The SAFE Bet Act, which would establish federal standards for online sportsbooks, including advertising provisions, has support from 64% of Americans. In 2026, 43% of U.S. adults said the widespread legalization of sports betting is a “bad thing” for society — up from 34% just three years earlier. This is the moment to act: contact your representatives, push platforms to update their influencer content policies, and support organizations working on data-broker regulation. We addressed cigarette advertising through sustained public and regulatory pressure, and that same thing should be happening here.

A Note on Prediction Markets

Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have positioned themselves as tools for “forecasting” rather than gambling, which has shaped their regulatory treatment in ways that don’t match their actual function for most users. A March 2026 National Council on Problem Gambling survey found that 30% of Americans consider prediction markets most similar to gambling — the single most common response — and 65% believe they should be subject to the same state regulations as other sports betting activities.

For young people, prediction markets pose a specific risk: they reward research, encourage following current events, and produce winners who can credibly attribute their success to knowledge. This makes them feel fundamentally different from slot machines. But the consideration-chance-prize structure is clearly present, and the platforms are designed to maximize engagement.

The implications also extend beyond personal finance risk into societal risk, where you are wagering on what a public figure will do next, introducing ethical concerns that are only beginning to be understood, including profiting from war or other crises and the potential for insider knowledge to shape outcomes.

The Through Line

What stays with me is this: my students could name every manipulation technique I used, and still thought they were in control.

Instead of being a failure of knowledge, I see this as evidence of how well these systems work.

We are asking young people to navigate an environment that is engineered to feel normal, harmless, and even profitable, while being none of those things for many of them. And, as with many of our online systems where young people can be found, it’s not a fair fight.

We know we need to talk to kids about gambling. The real question is whether we are willing to take it seriously enough to treat it as a system in need of regulation, not just a set of individual choices.

If you or someone you know is struggling with gambling-related harm, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is available at 1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738). Resources also available at ncpgambling.org.

Soni Albright is a teacher, parent educator, curriculum specialist, researcher, and writer for Cyber Civics with nearly 24 years of experience in education. She has taught the Cyber Civics curriculum for 14 years and currently works directly with students while also supporting families and educators. Her experience spans a wide range of school settings—including Waldorf, Montessori, public, charter, and homeschool co-ops. Soni regularly leads professional development workshops and is passionate about helping schools build thoughtful, age-appropriate digital literacy programs. Please visit:  https://www.cybercivics.com/parent-presentations