Futures At Stake: Youth, Gambling, And Society

Epilogue: Juvenile Gambling in North America: Considering Past Trends and Future Prospects

Epilogue Juvenile Gambling in North America Considering Past Trends and Future Prospects Durand F. Jacobs Introduction As this volume reveals, the citizens of the United States and Canada now have at their disposal a broad, representative, and empirically derived database that describes the parameters of juvenile gambling in North America. This research provides information about the relationship between juvenile gambling and attending factors attributable to personal, family, peer, school, and broader community influences . Notable among these topics is the expansion of legally sanctioned forms of gambling throughout the United States and Canada over the past decade and a half. This rapidly accumulating body of knowledge provides sometimes disturbing new insights into, first, the surprisingly early age of onset for gambling among our children; second, where, with whom, on what, and how much juveniles gamble; and third, juveniles’ self-reports on the short-term negative consequences they have experienced as a result of their gambling. Several studies also have illuminated the underlying motives that lead juveniles to gamble, and revealed the unusual psychological reactions, while gambling, that sharply differentiate problem from nonproblem gamblers. These latter findings suggest new directions for further inquiries about the predisposing causes and course of problematic gambling among juveniles. These findings in turn have the potential to lead to new and improved outreach and educational, assessment, treatment, and prevention strategies. The intent of this epilogue is to summarize and focus information about juvenile gambling in order to facilitate the attainment of four major goals: 1. To increase public awareness of the nature and extent of gambling activities among juveniles, and of the prevalence of serious gambling problems among these legally underage youth. 2. To build appropriate outreach and treatment programs for juvenile problem gamblers, staffed by specially trained education, social service, and health professionals . 3. To approach high schools and middle schools with self-screening tools and programs that will facilitate secondary prevention through early identification of, and appropriate education and counseling for, juveniles who are beginning to experience gambling-related problems. 4. To establish primary prevention programs within the curricula of both elementary and middle schools that will reduce the likelihood of children acquiring any addictive pattern of behavior, including pathological gambling, as they approach adolescence. Concurrently, it also is necessary to obtain the active collaboration and financial support of the gaming industry, both public and private, in pursuit of these goals. Background There is reason to believe that most legally underage youth throughout North America have gambled for money during the past year. Yet, there is insufficient public recognition of, or concern with, juvenile gambling. The apparent unwillingness of adult society to acknowledge the extent of gambling behaviors among its children may reside in the belief that legal sanctions are sufficient to discourage any “really serious” gambling among those under 18 years of age . . . so, not to worry. Perhaps it could also reflect the reluctance of adult society to face up to its own role in fostering childhood and teenage gambling, since the overwhelming majority of young people who gamble report that they were introduced to this recreational diversion by their parents and older relatives. Could it be that underage gambling is simply dismissed as harmless fun and games? Alternatively, is it a delayed awareness about this new component of current adolescent experience on the part of schools, churches, government authorities, and the gaming industry? And, finally, how big a problem can it be? A series of independent survey studies of middle school– and high school–age youth conducted between 1984 and 2000 in several states and provinces spanning North America suggests that between 40 and 90 percent of these youth (varying somewhat from locale to locale) has gambled for money during the previous year. In other words, this research indicates that within the past year, as many as 14 million 12- to 17-year-old juveniles in the United States have been gambling for money with or without adult awareness or approval. Since the overwhelming majority of these Juvenile Gambling in North America 257 juveniles are under their state’s legal gambling age, they have been gambling illegally . Furthermore, research suggests that almost 2 million of these juveniles are experiencing serious gambling-related problems. There is equal reason to believe that in Canada, 1.3 million juveniles have been gambling for money in the past twelve months, with most doing so without adult awareness or approval, and...