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Home  >  Prevention  >  Strengthening Community and Resources

Strengthening Community and Resources

Prevention of Youth Problematic Behaviors in Gambling, Gaming and Digital Media Overuse

Prevention of Youth Problematic Behaviors in Gambling, Gaming and Digital Media Overuse

What to Know

  • Problems related to gambling, gaming and digital media overuse can impact both physical and mental health, relationships, school, work and overall well-being.
  • Social media can impact sleep cycles and mental health and expose youth to cyberbullying, sexual exploitation, sexual content, alcohol and gambling.
  • Excessive technology use can impair executive functioning in the brain in the areas of attention and memory.
  • Youth with gambling problems are more likely to engage in tobacco, alcohol and drug usage.
  • Persuasive design concepts are utilized to increase the time and money people spend online.
  • Gambling marketing and advertising is reaching youth and impacting their behaviors and attitudes.

Communities and prevention work

  • Communities should first engage in strengthening community support and resources. Community-based processes and strengthening resources involves coordinating programs with other agencies, developing and evaluating programs, assessing community needs, engaging in strategic planning, providing training and technical assistance, and engaging in coalition and workgroup building activities.
  • This would be an example of the Strategic Prevention Framework (SFP) at work and as a tool that can be utilized to inform, build capacity, implement, and evaluate intervention programs.  

Prevention of youth problematic behaviors in gambling, gaming, and digital media

  • Despite adolescent gambling being illegal, youth engage in gambling with a prevalence rate higher than adults. Global findings indicate that 8-15 percent of youth are at-risk for problem gambling and 3-8 percent are living with problem gambling.
  • Young people experience problems related to gambling at a higher rate than adults because their brains are still developing. This brain development, coupled with external pressure from family, peers, social media and industry marketing influences their decision making and behaviors.
  • Advances in technology have given companies platforms to market and advertise products and services. Gambling marketing and advertising are targeting children and adolescents utilizing social media, in-game advertising, online ads and promotions, gambling websites and apps, billboards and public advertising, promotional products, sports-betting sponsorships and celebrity endorsements.
  • Increased participation in gambling activities can be credited to an increase in access to gambling products and persuasive design concepts. These concepts utilize psychological and social theories to entice people and keep them engaged and spending money on gambling products and services.
  • Understanding marketing and advertising strategies is key to becoming media literate. The internet provides multiple reasons for all users to be able to recognize legitimate information verses propaganda or trickery used with false information or websites.
  • Media literacy is vital as a health literacy tool for youth to understand their involvement with the digital media world and the messages they are being inundated with each day.  
  • The online sports betting environment allows for fast and easy bets to be made by allowing multiple bets, in-play betting or high-frequency betting, which is becoming the norm. Bets can be made on sporting events from football, basketball, baseball, soccer, boxing, and so on. Gamblers not only bet on the end of the match, but throughout the gambling activity.
  • This type of betting is comparable to a slot machine where bets can be placed every six seconds.  This kind of repetitive betting environment enforces gambling misconceptions like the illusion of control and increase impulsive and irrational decision-making.
  • Sports betting marketing can be found everywhere with states that have legalized online and brick and mortar sports betting. Research also addressed how sports betting advertising and associated strategies affect the attitudes of young people, parents, and young males.
  • Gambling commercial enterprises deliberately position sports betting as an activity engaged in by single, professional, upwardly mobile young men. In addition, skill-enhancing and masculine narratives also play a large role in sports betting. This creates the idea that betting is a game a person can become better at with time and practice. It also plays into the narrative that “real men” are brave enough to prove their sports betting knowledge.  
  • Social media is also becoming a huge driver in influencing spending behaviors. This is not surprising with 60 percent of the global population and around 97 percent of adolescents participating in social media. Adolescents are also on their screens on an average of 9 hours per day. Companies can create engaging profiles and use online ads in social media.
  • Influencers on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok with large followings can and will promote products and services. Brands want influencers to talk about their products because research is showing that 61 percent of consumers trust social media influencers and are impacted by them.
  • Research also has indicated that celebrity endorsements of products and services are also affected by their following on social media.
  • Video games are rising to become a dominant form of entertainment and are being embedded into the digital world utilizing many diverse and financially lucrative strategies.
  • Free-to-play games are an example of how new strategies create business models that are driving new markets and new ways to engage consumers in spending money. Reports have indicated that as much as 85 percent of the profits from the free-to-play game market are coming from in-app purchases or microtransactions. This means that paying for a game upfront and playing until you buy the next updated version is gone. Players can “grind it out” or play more often to advance or they can “pay-to-play” by buying loot boxes, battle passes with multiple player opportunities, or leveling up etc.

Resources and Tools

Contact

Please contact Alison Wood, Youth Prevention Coordinator with the North Carolina Problem Gambling Program at [email protected] if you have any questions or are interested in consultation or technical assistance.