{"id":138963,"date":"2025-11-18T01:20:25","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T01:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/138963\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T01:20:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T01:20:25","slug":"sports-gambling-is-a-public-health-crisis-for-young-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/138963\/","title":{"rendered":"Sports gambling is a public health crisis for young men"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, Americans legally wagered<\/a> less than $5 billion on sports annually. Last year, they bet $150 billion.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s emerged isn\u2019t just a bigger gambling market but a public health crisis in the making, with young men as its primary casualties.<\/p>\n

Today 90% of bets are placed on phones, not at casinos or racetracks. More than half are live bets, placed while games are in progress. Open any betting app and you\u2019ll find hundreds of options per game: not just who wins but whether the next pitch will be a ball or a strike, whether Shohei Ohtani will get a home run and five strikeouts, whether LeBron James will score 30 points. You don\u2019t need to drive anywhere, get cash from an ATM, or even get out of bed. It has never been easier to gamble. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Most people who use these apps won\u2019t develop a gambling addiction. Most won\u2019t even lose much money; a study of 9 million<\/a> gamblers from the 2023-2024 NFL season found that 60% of bettors accounted for just 1% of sportsbook revenue. Between casual betting and full addiction, however, lies a massive gray area where millions of Americans, particularly young men, now live.<\/p>\n

\u201cI first realized I might have a problem when I started checking the odds first thing in the morning,\u201d says Danny (not his real name), a 20-year-old college sophomore. \u201cI\u2019d wake up, grab my phone, and open PrizePicks before even looking at my texts. Sometimes I\u2019d bet, sometimes I\u2019d just check the lines. Then I\u2019d look again between classes, and during meals. I wasn\u2019t losing a ton or failing out, but it started affecting me a lot \u2026 when my bets hit I felt on top of the world, but when they lost I felt like an idiot, and couldn\u2019t concentrate on school or even on hanging out with my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tIs it \u2018inevitable\u2019 that men die more than five years earlier than women?<\/a><\/p>\n

What Danny describes \u2014 obsession, mood swings, intrusive thoughts \u2014 represents what mental health professionals, educators, and increasingly young men themselves now recognize as a widespread problem. The International Classification of Diseases calls it \u201chazardous gambling:\u201d patterns that \u201cappreciably increase the risk of harmful physical or mental health consequences\u201d without qualifying for a diagnosis of pathological gambling. These gamblers far outnumber those with full-blown addictions. As The Lancet noted in 2024<\/a> in a wide-ranging commission review, \u201ca substantial proportion of harm is suffered by those individuals who fall below the threshold for gambling disorders.\u201d<\/p>\n

The consequences extend beyond lost money. Hazardous gambling is correlated with increased rates of anxiety and depression<\/a>, and young men who engage in it are more likely<\/a> to slide into a full-blown gambling addiction. Boys who frequently gamble miss more classes, perform worse in school<\/a>, drink more alcohol<\/a>, and participate in other risky behaviors<\/a> at higher rates, often to cope with gambling-related stress. These antisocial patterns compound, with gambling sucking up time and mental energy that might otherwise go toward relationships, hobbies, and personal growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But instead of warnings about these risks, young men see something else entirely: ads and influencers celebrating them. Consider FanDuel\u2019s recent campaign<\/a> featuring the comedian Eric Andr\u00e9, where he literally stalks a man throughout his day \u2014 while he\u2019s watching sports, when he\u2019s eating, even when he opens the freezer<\/a> \u2014 relentlessly pushing him to \u201cact on his hunch\u201d and place a bet. Another FanDuel ad shows<\/a> it straight: a man sitting in a pool, staring at his phone tracking bets while his family and friends socialize and enjoy life without him.<\/p>\n

The gambling industry has rebranded isolation and obsession as dedication. The tagline for the pool scene? \u201cCherish Every Moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sports media personalities embody this normalization. Earlier this year Stephen A. Smith, who recently signed a $100 million contract<\/a> with ESPN (which recently disbanded<\/a> its own sportsbook), was caught playing solitaire on his phone while at the NBA finals. He leveraged that moment: recently, he announced a partnership<\/a> with Papaya, a company offering a gamblified version of Solitaire where users compete to win money. In an artificial intelligence generated ad<\/a> for the World Solitaire Championship, Smith is shown at NBA games, in bed, at yoga class, and even at his own wedding playing the game. \u201cIf you want to make it,\u201d the television personality says, \u201cquit distracting yourself, and keep your head in the only game that matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is now impossible to watch a broadcast without being pushed to bet. What Danny recognizes as a problem is exactly what the apps are designed to create: users glued to the screen, consumed by their bets above all else.<\/p>\n

Young men are the perfect targets, biologically programmed to embrace<\/a> risk-taking. This generation has been groomed to gamble since childhood, with randomized reward systems in video games nudging them to spend real money for a chance at winning big. They\u2019re economically anxious, facing a weakened job market with wages that haven\u2019t kept pace with housing and education costs. They\u2019re isolated, with fewer close friendships than any generation on record, and increasingly reliant on parasocial relationships with streamers and influencers \u2014 many of whom are paid to promote betting apps. They\u2019ve been trained by digital life and social media to crave immediate rewards, making the delayed gratification of watching a game feel unbearable without money on it. And perhaps most simply: They love sports and think they \u201cknow ball,\u201d making it easy to convince themselves they\u2019ll come out on top.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tTestosterone made me feel 30 again \u2014 until it nearly broke my heart<\/a><\/p>\n

The gambling industry knows exactly what it\u2019s doing. As one former FanDuel employee put it<\/a>, \u201cAnybody under twenty-five they have their eye on \u2026 [those are] the guys that bring you all the money.\u201d These companies use sophisticated behavioral targeting to identify when users are at their weakest, and shower them with bonuses and promotions to keep them coming back. They\u2019ve learned from Silicon Valley, combining addiction science with smartphone technology to create products more captivating than Nevada casinos ever dreamed. While the house has always won it\u2019s now better than ever, and available in your pocket 24\/7.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t need to wait for tragedies to pile up to recognize a public health crisis. The warning signs are everywhere \u2014 in Danny\u2019s morning routine, in LeBron James\u2019 incessant DraftKings ads, in the millions of young men buried in their phones gambling while life passes them by. Other countries have begun to act: Britain cracked down on predatory VIP programs<\/a>, Belgium declared loot boxes in video games illegal, and various countries banned athletes and celebrities from promoting gambling and in-game advertisements. But America is still pretending gambling is all freedom and entertainment while a generation gets hooked.<\/p>\n

Last year Bill Miller, the president of the American Gaming Association, the industry\u2019s main lobbying group, told<\/a> \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t believe that there\u2019s an addiction to mobile betting any more than there is an addiction to utilization of your phone.\u201d He\u2019s half right. The problem isn\u2019t just gambling, but its seamless integration into the technology we already can\u2019t put down. Danny and millions like him are exactly what these apps were designed to create: users constantly engaged, never satisfied, forever one bet away from the version of themselves they imagine. The one who wins.<\/p>\n

Isaac Rose-Berman is a fellow at the American Institute for Boys and Men focused on gambling research and policy.<\/p>\n

STAT\u2019s coverage of health challenges facing men and boys is supported by Rise Together, a donor advised fund sponsored and administered by National Philanthropic Trust and established by Richard Reeves, founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men; and by the Boston Foundation. Our\u00a0financial supporters<\/a>\u00a0are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, Americans legally wagered less…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[163,85,46,86245,522,523,546],"class_list":["post-138963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-mens-and-boys-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}