By Janna Herron

The rise of sports-betting apps and prediction markets has turbocharged teen gambling on games – and parents often have no idea

If you find out your teen is gambling, lashing out at them is a losing strategy, experts say.

Remember how quaint betting on March Madness, the Super Bowl or other sporting events used to be? Writing down your picks in a bracket, or buying a square for $5 or $10?

The ritual seemed so innocuous that many adults didn’t worry if their teenage kids created their own betting pools in school.

Not anymore.

The rise of sports-betting apps and prediction markets has turbocharged gambling on games. Bettors can wager on all aspects of sporting events besides just the outcome – placing bets on the performance of players, which team scores first or the point spread at a specific time, among other real-time bets.

The many opportunities now to strike it big are also enticing teenagers to download these apps and take a chance.

Consider this: More than a third of boys in the U.S. ages 11 to 17 said they gambled in some form within the last year, according to a survey this year from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit education and advocacy group. An 2024 poll of students at a California high school found three-quarters of male students and one-quarter of female students had made an online sports bet despite being underage.

Lawmakers are behind the curve on policing online betting – though recent efforts have been put forth. That leaves it up to parents to help their child understand the risks.

Why teens are attracted to sports gambling

Since the landmark Supreme Court decision in 2018 that allowed states to decide whether to allow sports wagering, this type of gambling has proliferated. Now, 32 states have legalized online sports betting, according to the American Gaming Association.

Additionally, prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket have also made it easy to bet on the outcome of all kinds of events, including sports. These platforms are not technically considered gambling because they are federally regulated as financial exchanges, allowing them to operate in all 50 states – even those that ban sports betting.

“Casino gambling used to be localized, so younger people weren’t really ever exposed to this,” said Logan Fields, an assistant professor of psychology at Arcadia University. “But now that it is everywhere, it’s becoming hypernormalized.”

Placing a bet is also easy to do at almost any time. You can wager first thing in the morning, before you go to bed or in the middle of the day at your job – or at school. The reward loop, Fields said, takes a lot less time with apps than when placing a bet in a casino or with a bookie.

“You can get that dopamine hit so much quicker and so much more often,” said Fields, who specializes in addiction psychology and biology. “And that creates this really toxic reinforcement loop.”

These apps are also savvy marketers. They often offer bonus bets of $100 or more after you make a small deposit of $5 or $10, said Michelle L. Malkin, an assistant professor and director of the Gambling Research and Policy Initiative at East Carolina University. These can be especially enticing to younger adults – even underage ones, who may have $5 but likely don’t have easy access to over $100.

“So now you have a young person betting $100 instead of $5, and if they win on even one of those bets, what’s the chance they’re going to be OK just going back to $5 when the difference in that win is so substantial in their life?” Malkin said.

Sports-betting apps, in particular, are very “clever” with their marketing to make a bettor feel like they have an edge on the competition, Fields added. And for young people, wagering on sports might seem easier to master because they’re often so familiar with sports.

“So there’s this illusion of control that is really effective on a lot of young people,” Fields said, “especially with a get-rich-quick kind of attitude.”

Why parents are in the dark

Unfortunately, most parents are unaware of the lure. Only 2% of parents think their teen has used an online betting platform, according to a C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital national poll on children’s health two years ago. But the Common Sense Media survey found 23% of boys said they participated in gaming-related gambling and 12% said they participated in sports-related gambling.

“Parents are way underestimating whether their kid is already doing this – way underestimating,” said Sarah J. Clark, the co-director of the C.S. Mott poll.

Parents may assume the online betting companies or states themselves have put sufficient protections in place to prevent underage gambling. People must be at least 21 years old to gamble legally in the U.S.

But teenagers are resourceful, Clark said, and can often circumvent those safeguards. They may place bets through older friends or siblings who have legitimate accounts. They may swipe a parent or grandparent’s details to open an account on these apps – such as their name, address, date of birth and Social Security number, along with a photo of their driver’s license.

And nearly 7 in 10 parents in the C.S. Mott poll said their teen has a bank account, debit card and/or credit card in their own name, providing a way to access money for bets.

The problem is that teenagers don’t always make the best decisions, which can accelerate risky behavior. An adolescent’s brain is not fully developed – specifically the regions in charge of decision-making – until their mid-20s. Teens also tend to think they’re invincible, Clark said, dismissing the potential bad outcomes from their gambling more readily.

“If you’re going to do this safely, you want to have a well-considered approach. ‘Well considered’ and ‘teens’ don’t always go together,” Clark said. “That’s the battle that parents are fighting here.”

Compounding the problem is a teenager’s lack of financial resources, Malkin added. Teens typically wager with money intended for other purposes, like lunch or gas, which parents often don’t know about.

“That can form problems really quickly,” Malkin said. “They’re going to chase faster; they need to make up that money, because they think, ‘My parents are going to kill me.'”

In fact, lashing out at your teen if you find out they’re gambling is a losing strategy, these experts said.

“Shaming or punishment is just not the way to go,” Fields said. “We need to come at them with open arms and say, ‘You’re not stupid because you lost this money. Let’s find the path together to get back on track.'”

How to talk to your teen

Start by approaching your teen with genuine curiosity when it comes to gambling, said Diana Isern, an assistant principal at Brooklyn Preparatory High School and the author of the forthcoming book, “Money Talks: An Educator’s Guide to Teaching Financial Empowerment.”

What plans do they have for the money if they win, and what about these apps is interesting to them? How did they find the app? Did they see an advertisement for it from a celebrity? Are their friends into online betting?

“Starting with curiosity lets their defenses go down,” Isern said. “And if you have a situation where your kid can come to you, then you’re in a good situation right there.”

They may know more about these apps than you do, Isern noted, and that’s OK. It helps to learn the jargon and different concepts alongside them, which keeps the conversation open.

Parents can help teens think more critically about such apps and gambling in general. Ask why they think the app is offering free bets (to get people to play more), or why the apps use popular celebrities in commercials (to entice new users). The Federal Reserve Bank of New York also provides a teaching plan on sports betting that Isern has used before.

She also recommended sharing research insights about sports betting during your conversations. For example, you could share that sports bettors are more likely to ramp up their spending, shrink their investments and increase their credit-card debt, according to one academic study. Another study found that sports gambling leads to lower credit scores and more bankruptcies and debt collections. And a third survey in Massachusetts found that about 1 in 10 kids who placed bets experienced “problematic gambling.”

“I never want to be a person that comes in and just says, ‘This is bad,'” Isern said about talking to her high-school students about gambling. “So we have to create these moments where teens organically come to that assumption themselves.”

Putting your foot down won’t do any good, either.

“The worst thing parents can do is be like, ‘I’m against gambling and my kid is never going to do it,'” said Clark.

Instead, maybe experiment together with the apps, Clark said. You can demonstrate how it’s harder than they realize to win. You can also talk about how certain bets, like a parlay that combines more than one wager, may sound more lucrative but also increases the likelihood of losing.

The goal for parents is to help kids understand the strategies these apps are using against them, and teach them how to “spot it and then how to deal with it,” she added.

Of course, make sure that the demonstration is a teaching moment. Otherwise, parents betting alongside their kids or other family members just for fun may end up sending the wrong message, Malkin said – especially if they celebrate with their kid after a win.

“They then actually believe they’re good at gambling, even though there’s no such thing,” she said.

If you plan to allow your child to make bets in a supervised setting, put some constraints in place, Clark said. Some ideas: Block certain gambling categories, download the app only to your phone (and not your teen’s), lock the app after a certain time, remove payment methods, limit the amount of money used for betting per month, and turn off push notifications to slow down that reward loop.

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04-17-26 1548ET

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