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Americans will bet more than $3.3 billion during March Madness this year, according to the American Gaming Association, and that's a new high. Young men are the biggest gamblers in America. They're hit with invitations from all sides every time they open YouTube or watch a game on TV. Young men are also the most conflicted about sports gambling. We sent NPR's Dianna Douglas to a college campus to find some young people who had direct experience with gambling.
DIANNA DOUGLAS, BYLINE: That was about as easy as finding a male student. Seventy percent of sports gamblers in the U.S. are men. So I stopped a few walking across the campus of Georgetown University.
LUCIAN GLEISER: The vast majority of my peers do it pretty often. I'm a student-athlete here so I can't really, but it's more common than you think.
DOUGLAS: Lucian Gleiser from Hanover, New Hampshire, is on the track team. He said gambling is a really popular pastime among his friends. Placing a bet is as easy as checking the weather on your phone. People gamble during lectures, while watching games with friends at all hours of the day and night.
GLEISER: To them, it's mainly a hobby. They don't play with crazy sums. Like, the most I've seen is maybe 25 or $30.
DOUGLAS: Sports gambling is legal in most states for people who are over 21, ever since the Supreme Court overturned a federal ban in 2018. But a lot of boys are starting to gamble much younger. Jack Heaps said most of his friends started gambling in high school.
JACK HEAPS: I'm from Alabama, and a bunch of my friends go to, like, Alabama, and Ole Miss in Georgia, and I'd say it's definitely, like, from visiting them, like, higher down there.
DOUGLAS: Heaps is also an athlete and prohibited from betting on any NCAA sports. He's a little insulated from peer pressure because none of his teammates can gamble, which is good. Some of his high school friends have already gone too far.
HEAPS: I've definitely seen it. Yeah. A few of my friends, like, pretty bummed out for the week 'cause they lost some pretty big money. But it seems like the next week, they're always back at it again. So...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah.
DOUGLAS: The number of teenage boys who gamble has exploded in the last few years. Michael Robb, a researcher at Common Sense Media, surveyed a thousand boys and found that a third of 11-, 12- and 13-year-old boys were gambling. And by high school...
MICHAEL ROBB: Fifty percent of kids by the age of 17 said they've gambled in the last year.
DOUGLAS: Boys told him that they gambled in friendly competitions with friends, teammates, or family members. Many boys gambled for a sense of belonging.
ROBB: And so, you know, what happens is that it becomes part of the social interaction. It's something that you do together. You talk about - you know, you kind of compare how you did week to week, you share your wins. And it just starts to feel normal.
DOUGLAS: Gambling can quickly become a problem if a teenager starts to believe that they can earn money this way. To ward off addictive behaviors, Robb recommends better age verification from gaming sites and more rules around advertising. Robb also thinks that families need to share their values about gambling with their kids.
ROBB: Nearly half of boys said there were no specific family rules related to gambling or game-related spending. Those rules don't have to be super restrictive, but they should be clear and they should be consistently enforced.
DOUGLAS: If family rules and values around gambling are in flux, it's a perfect reflection of the country at large. Tens of millions of Americans have tried sports gambling since it became legal nearly a decade ago, but public opinion about it has soured at the same time. Back at Georgetown University, Jackson Mayer (ph), a student from LA, said his whole generation would benefit from a few more guardrails around gambling.
JACKSON MAYER: It's important that we try to limit it as it can be obviously very damaging to people's lives.
DOUGLAS: In 2022, about a fifth of young men said gambling was bad for society in a survey by the Pew Research Center. That number has more than doubled since.
Dianna Douglas, NPR News.
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