What the survey found
More than 40% of American teens ages 13 to 17 said they had gambled in the past year, according to a survey released Wednesday and reported by NBC News. The findings from Rutgers University's Center for Gambling Studies have renewed concern about how common betting has become among minors.
The team polled nearly 1,700 people between ages 13 and 27, and 52.5% of that full group reported some gambling. For respondents 17 and under, the figure was nearly 43%, even though gambling is against the law at that age.
Lia Nower, who directs the Rutgers center and led the report, tied the numbers to technology. "We are living in a time where anyone can have a casino or sports book in their pocket," she said. She added that teens who should be playing sports are now betting on them, often with family members.
Signs of problem gambling
The report also looked at the risk of harm. Of respondents who gambled, nearly 40% "showed symptoms of problem gambling," according to the report, and 10% could be considered "high-risk problem gamblers." Among gamblers 17 and under, about 11% were classed as "high risk for problems."
Nower described the results as cause for alarm. She said gambling has an operant conditioning element that leads some people to become addicted over time. In her telling, most people who begin young wager small sums with friends or relatives, then gradually add activities and raise how often and how much they bet.
She said researchers had feared that easier access would push up problem gambling among young people. "Now we know. It does," she said.
How gambling was defined
The researchers used a wide definition covering 21 activities. These included street games, lottery tickets, games of skill, cryptocurrency trading and prediction markets. Nower summed up the approach as "anything where money is wagered," and said the wording drew on a similar definition from a 2017 study.
Scratch-off tickets were the most common activity, followed by bingo and lottery tickets. Around 20% of those who reported gambling said they had bet on sports, and just over 6% said they had used prediction markets.
Gambling, Nower said, is no longer limited to casinos and lottery tickets. She said it is increasingly built into video games, sports broadcasts and other products young people can reach.
Limits on comparing with the past
The survey was fielded in the spring and early summer. Nower described it as the first national look at gambling prevalence among U.S. teens and young adults in close to two decades. The report itself does not compare its results with earlier trends, so it is hard to say whether participation has risen.
In an interview, Nower pointed to a 2007 study in the Journal of Gambling Studies in which 68% of respondents ages 14 to 21 had gambled in the prior year. The methods and age ranges differ, so the figures cannot be compared directly. Even so, NBC News reported that the rate of problem gambling in the new survey appears higher than in the earlier one.
A changed betting landscape
More than eight years have passed since the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that barred states from permitting sports betting. That decision set off a surge in wagering nationwide, and some form of sports gambling is now legal in 39 states and Washington, D.C. Mobile apps offering casino games and sports betting have grown especially popular.
Baseball fans watching the World Series this past week saw heavy advertising from prediction markets such as Polymarket, Novig and Kalshi, NBC News reported. The trading platform Webull also appeared on the Tampa Bay Rays uniform.
Nower said the findings "should be a wake-up call for parents, educators, health professionals and policymakers." She argued that waiting until adulthood to address gambling harm would mean very high rates of problem gambling by then, and said prevention must begin earlier and screening must be broader.
