Recent research has shown that one in 25 teenagers may be facing gambling-related harm.
At a time when online betting and extensive advertising has made gambling in sport look normal to customers, more underage individuals are being negatively affected by the issue. The last few years have seen a significant increase in gambling participation and problem gambling rates among teenagers to the point where about 75% of underage individuals believe gambling is just a normal part of sport.
Teenagers who are currently in year 10 to 12 at Ballarat Christian College participated in a special school education program called Love the Game, which is focused on getting more information about the normalisation of gambling among children. Apart from that, the research has been seeking to find out how gambling has turned into a way to spend money, and also to get more information about the risks associated with it and possible harms that it can cause to gamblers.
Tanika James from the community service organisation Child & Family Services Ballarat (CAFS), which delivers the program that has been developed for Ballarat schools by the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, has revealed that a range of activities and information set to prevent gambling-related harm from affecting teenagers was used at the workshop. Ms James explained that researchers use some of the factors that make gambling look normal to young individuals, such as aggressive advertising, simulated gambling products, games which look like gambling and provide children with information about them.
Workshop Aims at Gathering More Information about Teenagers’ Gambling Habits
The special workshop also offers activities such as making a weekly budget and demonstrating the actual impact which gambling and losing money has on people, as well as showing children the risk of “chasing losses” while hoping to generate a winning large enough to compensate for their losses.
Discussions regarding the normalisation of gambling and gambling-related risks are also carried out, as specialists are trying to raise teenagers’ awareness of the risks and inform them gambling could end up experiencing some negative consequences. Some of the phrases used in sports betting advertising such as “cash back”, “special offer”, “the fold”, which make it seem impossible to lose money.
As explained by Ms James, some teenagers often find it hard to fit in, and an increasing number of young people use the normalisation of gambling and sports betting to do that, because of the belief that “everyone is doing it”. The good thing is that most students are pretty open about it, so sharing their experience could be helpful for getting more information about the impact which gambling and sports betting have on children.
In any case, the one in 25 teenagers suffers from gambling-related harm, and that is a trend that needs to be addressed by authorities, charity organisations, schools and parents in order to prevent gambling addiction from spreading among underage individuals in Australia.
- Author
Daniel Williams
