Online Sports Betting And Your Mental Health
I was recently lucky enough to be interviewed by TIME magazine for a piece on online sports betting in college students. I’d like to share some quotes from the article, both from myself and from other leaders in the field.
The common denominator among all these forms of betting are mobile phones. Gambling on a phone can combine the compulsive behavior created by social media—the constant pursuit of dopamine hits—with the addictive qualities of gambling. Perhaps more critically, it also eradicates the barriers of time and space that once were obstacles for gamblers, says Dr. James Sherer, a psychiatrist who treats addiction in New Jersey. “You don’t have to go to a casino, you don’t have to go to a bank, you don’t need to carve time out of your schedule, you can do it at work, you can do it in the middle of the night,” he says. Sports betting also allows for a constant stream of live, real-time wagers on events within a game, such as how many hits a baseball player will get, further engrossing the gambler.
“Because of the way advertising works these days, even if you are trying to avoid it, you are going to be served up more options and opportunities to re-engage in that behavior than if you were someone who never engaged in that behavior in the first place,” says Sherer, who serves on the American Psychiatric Association's task force on addiction. “The second you really start to struggle, you are set for continued issues down the line.”
Fong, the UCLA doctor, also identifies a fear of missing out, or FOMO, as a prime condition for luring college students. Gamblers are enticed with teases and offers, all with the promise of hitting a huge score. It animates speculators on crypto currencies and stocks as well as gamblers.
“You have a chance to beat the bank, you have a chance to be spectacular,” Fong says of the gambler’s mindset. “Gambling is really good at playing on FOMO.”
Therapists who specialize in gambling addiction are a small sub-set, and clinicians with experience helping gamblers are rare on college campuses. Large universities have counseling departments, to help students with things like depression and anxiety, and they also employ professionals to deal with substance abuse. Gambling falls between the cracks and “doesn’t have a home,” says Jim Lange, the executive director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Drug Misuse Prevention and Recovery, at Ohio State University. Schools don't usually ask about gambling on student welfare surveys, he says, and students who self-report gambling addictions are extremely uncommon, and probably not representative of the overall population.
“The harm is happening for real right now and we don’t know what the next five to 10 years look like,” Fong says. “If we increased gambling by even half a percent, we’re talking about millions and millions of lives damaged.”
Article by Oliver Staley, TIME, published 12/12/23. Link: https://time.com/6342504/gambling-addiction-sports-betting-college-students/
