On a mobile device? Click here.<\/a> <\/p>\nEven though there are age minimums of 18 or 21, Dr. Nasir Naqvi, who is director of Columbia University’s gambling disorders clinic, said he is treating patients as young as 13 with online gambling problems.<\/p>\n
Naqvi said there’s significant overlap between how gambling and substances affect the brain.<\/p>\n
“Young people, their brains develop in a certain way in which the reward systems, the systems that respond to pleasurable things, for example, like winning money, develop more quickly than the parts of the brain that rein in rewarding behaviors,” Naqvi said.<\/p>\n
A study by the Journal of Behavioral Addictions found up to seven percent of youth who gamble are diagnosed with a gambling disorder, compared to one percent of adults.<\/p>\n
Naqvi calls the legalization of online sports betting a mistake from a public health standpoint.<\/p>\n
He said before, people used to take a trip to Vegas, gamble, and leave, but now it is more accessible, even to teens.<\/p>\n
“In online sports betting, it stays on your phone, which is tethered to your body at all times, so there’s really no escape from this,” Naqvi said.<\/p>\n
Joe Maloney, president and CEO of the Sports Betting Alliance, said the industry has resources to govern play, such as limits on deposits, the amount of time people spend on the apps, and the number of wagers people can make in a 24-hour period, something he describes as remarkably different than previous illegal and unregulated environments.<\/p>\n
“If we were solely in the business of creating a set of problem gamblers or an addicted generation, we would not be in business,” Maloney said.<\/p>\n
Malek, now 28 years old, said he has been abstinent from gambling for six years.<\/p>\n
He travels the country as a speaker on gambling and said he tells teens to be aware that the habits they form at a young age could stick with them and escalate as they get older.<\/p>\n
He said he hopes parents will stay up to date on current trends affecting teens and determine whether they’re providing resources to their children that allow them to gamble.<\/p>\n
“There is such a thin line between a problem and not a problem,” Malek said.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Saul Malek said he used to sneak around and lie to his parents and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[245224,97,259,260],"class_list":["post-551343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-245224","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}