Rutgers Study Documents Elevated Underage Gambling Rates and Problem Behaviors Across US Youth
Rutgers study finds 42.7% of US teens 13-17 gambled last year, with 11% of teen gamblers at high risk for addiction. Emerging formats like prediction markets and social casinos show 40-41% high-risk rates, four times other activities. Family history and lower income strongly predict elevated participation and harm.
SCCG Take — Operators must implement uniform age controls on novel products now, or regulators will impose stricter national standards that constrain market access.
A major Rutgers University report has documented widespread underage gambling in the United States. The national prevalence study, the first of its kind in nearly two decades, surveyed 1,677 young Americans and found that 42.7 percent of teens ages 13 to 17 gambled in the past year. Overall, 52.5 percent of respondents ages 13 to 27 reported past-year gambling.
Researchers identified 5.4 percent of all respondents as high-risk problem gamblers. Among those who gambled, 39.5 percent showed some symptoms of problem gambling and 10.3 percent met high-risk criteria. For teens who gambled, the high-risk figure stood at 11 percent.
Lia Nower, director of the Center for Gambling Studies at the Rutgers School of Social Work, said the findings should serve as a wake-up call. "These findings should be a wake-up call for parents, educators, health professionals and policymakers. Gambling is no longer confined to casinos and lottery tickets. It is increasingly embedded in video games, sports broadcasts and other products young people can access."
Scope of High-Risk Participation
The study reviewed 21 activities spanning traditional and emerging formats, including sports betting, prediction markets, social casino games and cryptocurrency trading. Approximately 40 percent of prediction-market participants and 41 percent of social casino players qualified as high-risk problem gamblers, a rate nearly four times higher than for other activities. Less than 2 percent of the general adult population meets diagnostic criteria for gambling addiction by comparison.
Family gambling correlated strongly with youth participation and risk. 41.1 percent of all respondents reported a family or household member who gambled, rising to 51.5 percent among adolescents. Among high-risk teens, 75.5 percent had a gambling family member, 66.3 percent believed a family member had a gambling problem and 61.2 percent had gambled with family. Socioeconomic patterns also emerged, with Black respondents showing a 63.9 percent past-year gambling rate and elevated high-risk classifications for Black (17.7 percent) and Hispanic (12.8 percent) gamblers relative to White respondents (6.4 percent). Lower household income tracked with higher risk, reaching nearly 30 percent for gamblers from households earning under $10,000 annually.
Imperatives for Oversight and Prevention
The Rutgers researchers call for better youth education on gambling risks, increased oversight of emerging products that operate outside existing regulations, national minimum age-gating standards and targeted funding for prevention and treatment in high-risk communities. The report, as covered by iGaming Future, arrives amid ongoing debates over prediction markets, social casinos and responsible gambling effectiveness. These prevalence findings supply concrete data that regulators and operators must now address without delay.
Gaming, betting and prediction markets — the desk’s read, every weekday.
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