Teen Gambling Is Surging Across the US — And Schools May Be the Last Line of Defense

More than half of 16-year-old boys in the United States reported participating in gambling activity in the past year, according to a nationally representative survey conducted by Common Sense Media in July 2025. The figure — 51 percent of 16-year-olds — is part of a broader pattern that public health researchers, pediatricians, and educators are increasingly describing as a crisis hiding in plain sight. Since the Supreme Court cleared the way for states to legalize sports betting in 2018, adolescent gambling exposure has climbed sharply, and the research documenting its consequences is becoming harder to ignore.

The question now being debated in school districts, state legislatures, and public health circles is straightforward but difficult: what do we do about it? The answer that an increasing number of experts are landing on is schools — not as enforcers, but as educators. Gambling literacy, they argue, may be the most effective prevention tool available for a generation of teenagers who are encountering gambling through algorithms, social media feeds, sports broadcasts, and the phones in their pockets long before any adult in their lives has talked to them about the risks.

The Numbers Behind the Surge

The Common Sense Media report surveyed 1,017 boys ages 11 to 17 in the United States. Beyond the 51 percent figure for 16-year-olds, the data shows gambling participation climbing steadily with age: 24 percent of 14-year-olds reported gambling in the past year. Across the full sample, 36 percent of boys participated in some form of gambling — including online gaming-related gambling such as loot boxes, traditional gambling like poker or scratch tickets, and sports-related wagering including fantasy sports and prop-style pick’em games.

A March 2026 survey by the National Council on Problem Gambling found that 65 percent of US adults aged 21 and older report having gambled before age 21. Among 21-to-44-year-olds — the first generation to have legal online sports betting available from the time they turned 21 — 33 percent reported placing a sports bet before age 21, versus 11 percent of those 55 and older. The trend line is clear: early exposure to gambling is becoming more common, and legal online sports betting is accelerating it.

Problem gambling rates among adolescents are estimated at between 2 and 7 percent of young people who bet — roughly two to seven times the rate seen in the adult population. A 2025 study in the International Gambling Studies journal found that gambling before age 18 was associated with more than an 80 percent higher risk of problem gambling later in life, even after controlling for socioeconomic and social background factors. Dr. Nasir Naqvi, director of Columbia University’s gambling disorders clinic, told ABC News in March that he now routinely hears about children as young as 13 seeking support for possible gambling addictions.

How Young People Are Accessing Gambling

The legal gambling age in most states is 21, but the pathways to early exposure are numerous. The Common Sense Media report found that 61 percent of adolescent boys see gambling advertisements on YouTube, 60 percent on social media, and 57 percent during sports broadcasts. Algorithmic recommendation systems deliver gambling-related content to teenagers who have never searched for it. Loot boxes in video games — in-game purchases with randomized outcomes — expose children to gambling mechanics from a young age, with between 20 and 34 percent of youth making loot box purchases.

Prediction markets, available in all 50 states under federal CFTC regulation with an 18-year-old minimum age rather than the 21 required by most sportsbooks, represent a newer and less-discussed access point. Both DraftKings and Fanatics have launched prediction market products in unlicensed states at the 18+ age threshold. The legal minimum is lower, and the platforms are accessible on the same smartphones teenagers already carry.

Tony Cattani, the principal of Lenape High School in Medford Township, New Jersey, told Education Week in March that he regularly hears students discussing betting odds in informal settings. “They’re talking about the betting odds, rather than focusing on the actual outcome of the game and rooting on their teams,” he said. A student-athlete at his school mentioned awareness of the odds in their own games — a detail that sits uncomfortably close to the integrity concerns that have driven multiple professional sports gambling scandals in the past two years.

What Schools Can Actually Do

The Common Sense Media report recommends that schools integrate financial and digital literacy across their curricula in ways that help students develop critical thinking about money, risk, and the persuasive design of online platforms. It also recommends addressing peer influence directly — the number one predictor of whether someone will gamble is whether their friends gamble — and partnering with families to provide resources for recognizing gambling-like behaviors before they escalate.

Research on school-based prevention programs supports the approach. Studies cited by the National Institutes of Health indicate that prevention programs delivered in school settings and tailored to developmental stage have been shown to meaningfully reduce gambling behaviors among adolescents. The programs work best when they focus on correcting cognitive distortions — the belief that gambling is a reliable way to make money, that winning streaks are predictable, or that losses can always be recovered — rather than simply presenting gambling as dangerous without explaining why.

Carter Bennett, a high school junior in Wayne, Maine, created Project Gamechangers — an initiative addressing teen gambling through peer education — after witnessing classmates discussing the stress of lost bets firsthand. His work, supported by the Aspen Institute’s Center for Rising Generations, reflects a broader recognition that top-down adult messaging is less effective than peer-led conversations about risks. “This problem is not going away, and schools can play a vitally important role,” Bennett said.

The Responsible Gambling Conversation Sports Bettors Should Be Having

The sports betting industry has not been passive on the youth gambling issue. The Sports Betting Alliance, representing DraftKings, FanDuel, and other major operators, maintains that its platforms use mandatory age verification — including bank account data and social security numbers — to prevent underage access. Those controls are real, and they are meaningfully stricter than what offshore or unregulated platforms deploy.

But the research suggests the problem is not primarily about teenagers directly accessing licensed sportsbook apps. It is about normalization — the cumulative effect of gambling advertisements, sports broadcast integration of odds, celebrity endorsements, and peer behavior creating an environment in which gambling feels ordinary, low-stakes, and culturally endorsed by figures teenagers admire. By the time a teenager tries to access a licensed platform, the cognitive groundwork has often already been laid.

For adult sports bettors, the conversation about youth gambling is partly about personal responsibility in their own homes and partly about the broader industry they participate in. Legal sports betting generates enormous tax revenue and provides genuine entertainment to millions of adults who engage with it responsibly. It also, by virtue of its size and marketing reach, shapes the cultural environment in which teenagers form their first impressions of gambling. That responsibility does not fall on bettors alone — but it does not disappear entirely because the activity is legal.