New Study Shows Underage Gambling Could be a Problem
Friday, November 5th, 2010The Annenberg Adolescent Communication Institute is located at the University of Pennsylvania. The organization is one that has formed to do studies on young people and their gaming habits. It was interesting to see what their studies have shown because it points to the young market as one of the most quickly growing in the world. Now that young people are gaming at such a record rate, this is putting them in the foreground of gambling companies. It is difficult because gambling companies are seeing a huge advantage here—they can move in on the new market and make millions of dollars over any given month. They are taking on the same tactics as credit card companies did a few years ago. If you recall, some credit companies were under fire because of their targeting of the young college market. They set up booths and events on college campuses to attract new customers. Many credit card company executives looked at college-aged students as their “new market.” Unfortunately there was a repercussion to that. A few years later there was a rise in the number of bankruptcies being filed by consumers in their mid- to late twenties. It wasn’t hard to see what happened. Credit card companies gave young and uneducated people access to thousands of open credit and then they used it, with no regard to how they were going to pay it back. Experts are warning the same disaster could come to the youth now that gambling is being offered to then on this scale.
The survey done at University of Pennsylvania is showing that more young people are venturing into the world of gambling than ever. Of high school students in on the survey, 6.2% admitted to wagering on a monthly basis. This number is up from 2.7% last year. This means that in just one year the number of young people logging in illegally to wager at online websites has doubled. Likely that could open the door to a lot of problems in the future for them because of the dangerous nature of managing money. Without some safeguards built into the system, this survey shows that more disastrous financial results could come to the market soon.

