US rates of youth gambling rise slightly

The National Annenberg Survey of Youth was first conducted in 2002 with 900 young people between the ages of 14 to 22 and provides the only nationally representative picture of trends in youth gambling.

The Study revealed that 3.3 % of male respondents stated that they had played cards for money over the Internet in the last month, which was up on last year’s figure of 2.4 %. Those playing virtually on a weekly basis also increased slightly to 1.7 % from 1.1 % while card playing in general remained at about the same levels for both monthly at 26 % and weekly at five %.

“The card playing fad that we saw earlier in the decade appears to have lost its steam among young people ages 14 to 22,” said Dan Romer, Director for The Annenberg Adolescent Risk Communication Institute.

Romer revealed that the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act saw a “precipitous decline” in the weekly use of Internet gambling sites in 2007 and that this has remained throughout 2008. However, the Study projected, on a national basis, that more than 300,000 youth in the US still gamble for money at least once a week over the Internet with over 700,000 doing so monthly using third-party payment systems.

“The continued use of online gambling sites by many young people indicates that they are still risking their financial futures on poker,” said Romer. “This calls for continued efforts to educate young people about the hazards of Internet gambling.”