43% of U.S. Teens Gambled Last Year, First National Count in 20 Years

Forty-three percent of Americans ages 13 to 17 gambled in the past year, and about 11 percent of those who did met the threshold for a high-risk gambling problem while still below the legal age to place a regulated bet, according to a Rutgers University survey released October 28. Researchers at the Center for Gambling Studies at the Rutgers School of Social Work describe it as the first national prevalence study of U.S. adolescents and young adults in nearly two decades.

The survey covered 1,677 people ages 13 to 27 and asked about 21 activities, from bingo, raffles and games of skill to sports betting, esports wagering, cryptocurrency trading and prediction markets. Overall, 52.5 percent reported gambling in the past year. Among all respondents, 5.4 percent were classified as high-risk problem gamblers, a category the researchers equate with gambling addiction in clinical settings; among those who had gambled at all, 39.5 percent showed some symptoms and 10.3 percent were high-risk.

"We are living in a time where anyone can have a casino or sports book in their pocket," said Lia Nower, director of the center, who led the study. "Now teens who should be playing sports are betting on them, often with family members."

A benchmark that had gone missing

The release did not name a peer-reviewed journal, which means the numbers arrive as a university announcement rather than a published paper, and they rest on self-reported answers from a sample of roughly 1,700 people. Those limits matter for how much weight the state-level and demographic breakdowns can carry.

The comparison problem is larger. Without a national survey of adolescent gambling to point to for nearly 20 years, there is no clean baseline for the Rutgers figures, so "rising" describes the direction of a set of indicators inside this one study rather than a measured change from a known past level. What the study does establish is a current count for a population that state regulators, school systems and treatment providers have been guessing about.

The risk clusters at home

Family exposure turned out to be one of the strongest associations in the data. Forty-one percent of respondents said a family or household member gambled, including 51.5 percent of the 13-to-17 group. People who believed a household member had a gambling problem were more than five times as likely to be high-risk gamblers; those who had gambled with a family member were more than four times as likely.

Among high-risk teens, 75.5 percent had a family member who gambled, 66.3 percent believed a family member had a gambling problem and 61.2 percent had gambled with one. Nower's line about teens betting alongside relatives is not rhetorical color — it is the profile the survey kept producing.

The demographics skew in ways that track other addiction data. Black respondents reported the highest past-year participation at 63.9 percent, and among those who gambled, 17.7 percent of Black and 12.8 percent of Hispanic respondents were high-risk, against 6.4 percent of white respondents. Household income cut hardest at the bottom: nearly 30 percent of gamblers from households earning under $10,000 a year were high-risk, as were 22.8 percent of those from households between $10,000 and $20,000.

Gender ran the other way from what the industry's marketing suggests. Among gamblers, high-risk rates were 10.7 percent for females and 9.9 percent for males — a gap small enough to be noise.

Newer products carry roughly four times the risk

Two categories stood out. About 40 percent of people who bet on prediction markets and 41 percent of social casino players were classified as high-risk problem gamblers, a rate nearly four times that of gambling on other activities. Prediction markets let users take positions on sports and events through event contracts that may fall outside conventional gambling rules; social casinos simulate casino play, often without money at first.

The intensity measures point the same direction. Forty-six percent of gamblers used both online and in-person venues, and among high-risk gamblers 65.4 percent did, while 52.5 percent gambled weekly or more. High-risk gamblers averaged 6.7 different activities, compared with 2.7 among gamblers with no problems.

Gambling arrived alongside the rest of the comorbidity

Compared with people who did not gamble, gamblers reported higher rates of alcohol use (44.6 percent versus 25.9 percent), binge drinking (25.6 versus 10.5 percent), drug use (26.7 versus 17.6 percent), excessive social media use (51.0 versus 38.7 percent) and compulsive shopping (12.6 versus 7.8 percent). Among the high-risk group, 52.8 percent reported anxiety, 38.4 percent depression and 13.1 percent suicidal ideation.

That pattern is why dual diagnosis care matters more here than a gambling-specific program alone: a teenager who is betting weekly and drinking heavily is usually presenting with the substance first, and the betting surfaces later, if anyone asks.

What the researchers want changed

The center's recommendations are structural rather than clinical. It wants prevention education to start in middle school, with materials for students, parents, teachers and counselors. It wants oversight extended to prediction markets, social casino games and other gambling-like products that sit outside conventional safeguards. It wants a federal gambling regulator able to set national minimum standards, including self-exclusion lists that follow a player across online and land-based operators. And it wants an office for problem gambling inside the National Institutes of Health, working with community partners in low-income areas.

"We cannot wait until young people reach adulthood to begin addressing gambling-related harm," Nower said. "By that point, we will have very high rates of problem gambling. Prevention must start earlier, screening must be broader, and public policy must recognize that the gambling environment has changed dramatically."

For families reading the numbers, the practical question is where to take them. Gambling disorder treatment in most states means outpatient cognitive behavioral therapy, and the National Problem Gambling Helpline at 1-800-MY-RESET routes callers to the state-funded program that serves them. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline handles calls that involve more than betting.

What the next survey needs to show is whether the 43 percent holds. A single cross-section cannot distinguish a generation that grew up with betting apps from a moment when betting apps reached everyone at once, and the difference decides whether prevention belongs in middle school health class or in the app store.