March is Problem Gambling Awareness Month, and this is apt timing: It’s prime gambling season amid the NCAA’s March Madness basketball tournament and with the MLB opener on the horizon.
The gambling industry is currently in a golden age, driven by a 2018 Supreme Court decision that allowed states to legalize sports betting. The result? Unprecedented growth for the gambling industry. As an example, a recent report from Kansas found that gambling revenue in the state increased by 8,405 percent year-over-year.
But here’s the billion-dollar question: Where is all this new revenue coming from? I’ll give you a hint—the success of the gambling industry is not built on the backs of the winners. We don’t talk about this issue nearly as much as we should. Current statistics estimate that between 2-4 million adults in the United States have a gambling-related disorder. Yet gambling is conspicuously missing from most federal mental health and addiction agencies’ websites, like SAMHSA, NIDA, and NIH. This oversight has led to a vacuum in leadership and left those suffering from problem gambling underrepresented, unsupported, and unnecessarily vulnerable.
The issue of problem gambling is incredibly serious: The debts incurred through gambling can follow people for decades, and compulsive gambling is strongly linked to the risk of suicide. In fact, with 19 percent of problem gamblers having experienced suicidal ideation in the past year (versus 4 percent of the general population), it poses a higher risk for suicide than for chemical addictions.
So, given the severity of the problem, why aren’t we paying closer attention to it? Perhaps we’re misled by dated stereotypes of what someone who struggles with gambling looks like, say, a middle-aged man in a casino, spending his 401K at the blackjack table. Or a grandma, sitting at the corner slot machine, losing her savings one pull at a time. We need to change our mentality and recognize the face of modern problem gambling: young adults absorbed in their phones, sinking themselves into debt without ever getting up off the couch.
These days, problem gambling impacts people of all ages and has been made exponentially worse by the accessibility of gambling through mobile apps, video games, changing laws, and online sports betting. Socialization to gambling starts very young; although you must be 21 or older to gamble online or in a casino, the gaming industry has designed a workaround in the form of “loot boxes,” which have been integrated into many of the most popular video games that children play.
For those unfamiliar, a loot box is something that you can purchase (often using real-world money) in many games that is akin to taking a pull on a slot machine: You open the box to get a set of random items to use in the game, often that are entirely aesthetic (a new hat for your character, for example). Sometimes, however, you must acquire specific items from loot boxes to progress in the game, and just like for slot machines, there is an extremely low chance that any one loot box holds this item.
This system leads to users buying box after box, hoping to get that prized item they want so badly. The tactic is extremely common: nearly 60 percent of the top mobile games contain loot boxes, and over 90 percent of those games are approved for children as young as 12. Recent studies found that loot boxes generated up to $30 billion in revenue in 2018, and that the number of 8th graders buying them increased by 27 percent over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gambling behavior is thus increasingly trained and normalized so that by the time kids are young adults with credit cards, they’re primed to take the next step.
Once these teenagers roll into their early 20s, sports betting apps jockey for position, competing with video game loot boxes as the gambling method of choice. In fact, a recent study found that college-aged adults are betting on sports more than ever before: nearly 60 percent report betting on sports, 4 percent on a daily basis, and almost 6 percent report having lost over $500 in one day. These statistics are unprecedented and warrant serious concern. Gambling behaviors like these can compound over time, leading to worsening debt and other serious consequences (difficulty keeping a job, rifts with friends and family, and so on).
To make matters worse, the system is rigged for compulsive gambling to thrive, as there are virtually no regulations against predatory tactics that encourage problematic gambling behavior. Take free drinks and hotel rooms at casinos, for example. They’re framed as “perks,” but they’re actually traps. You’re more likely to stay longer, risk higher amounts, and place poorer bets if you’re buzzed and staying at the casino for free.
Similar tactics can be found in the online world, just dressed differently. As an example, you may have seen ads for “risk-free bet” promotions, where if you lose your first bet, you get “bonus bets” to try to win your money back. The catch is, the bet isn’t actually risk-free because you can’t withdraw any of the funds you receive from the promotion—you can only turn around and bet the “money” again, attempting to win back what you lost. This behavior is called “chasing your losses” and is one of the hallmark features of problematic gambling.
Here's another one: most online betting apps and sites offer “reward tiers” (gold, platinum, etc.) for people who risk more money on their platforms. This tactic creates the illusion of rewards and success, providing the user with titles and perks (including, you guessed it, bonus bets and “free plays”) distracting them from the reality that they’re actually losing increasing amounts money.
There are no safeguards in place to prevent people from cleaning out their bank accounts while playing these games. Rather, the people most in danger of being harmed by these tactics are the ones encouraged the most to keep playing. It’s a dangerous and reckless system, lacking any meaningful regulation to prevent predatory behaviors and targeting the most vulnerable populations, including young adults and children.
Awareness is our greatest asset to prevent this problem from getting exponentially worse. Just like any behavioral health problem, the way we think about it, talk about it, and treat it matters. If we turn a blind eye to the trends we’re seeing now, we’ll have a truly devastating epidemic on our hands sooner rather than later.
But, hope is far from lost—we have important research being conducted and warnings being sounded. We can change the way this game is played—but we need to be paying attention, having conversations, and ultimately taking action to turn these concerning gambling trends around.
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