A generation ago, the average teenager’s first bet was a friendly poker game or a bracket pool. Today, it’s a few taps on a phone. Sports betting is now legal in most U.S. states, online platforms and prediction market trading operate around the clock, and marketing engineered for maximum appeal is landing directly in the feeds of teenagers who aren’t supposed to be the intended audience — or maybe they are.
The result is a public health problem that’s grown up alongside a generation raised on smartphones, and one that the prevention field has been slow to catch up to.
Teen Sports Betting by the Numbers ##
12% of adolescents experience some form of gambling-related problem
Calado et al., 2017
The numbers are sobering. Legal sports betting now generates over $100 billion a year in the U.S., with the overwhelming majority of that happening online. Research suggests kids are placing their first bets earlier than they pick up a cigarette or a drink — often around age 12. And informal surveys have found that the vast majority of teenage boys already have a sports betting app on their phone, whether or not they’re technically old enough to use it.
Prevalence estimates suggest that up to 12% of adolescents experience some form of gambling-related problem — a rate two to three times higher than what’s seen in adults. That’s a signal that something about adolescence itself, combined with the current gambling landscape, creates unusual vulnerability.
The landscape keeps shifting, too. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket have surged in popularity by letting users trade contracts on the outcome of sports games and other events — and because they’re regulated as financial markets rather than as gambling, they’re open to anyone 18 or older, sidestepping the 21-and-up age minimum most states set for sports betting. Analysts have pointed to data suggesting college-age users, some of them still in high school, may already be a meaningful share of this growth. Addiction specialists are watching closely, warning that the mechanics look a lot like the prop bets already tied to gambling problems in young people — just relabeled as “predictions” instead of wagers.
Understanding Teen Brains
Part of the explanation is developmental. Teenagers’ brains aren’t finished building the circuitry responsible for impulse control and risk assessment, which doesn’t fully mature until the mid-20s. Combine that with cognitive blind spots common at this age — like overestimating one’s ability to control random outcomes, or misunderstanding basic probability — and you get a population primed to chase losses and take impulsive risks, especially with in-game or in-app betting that’s designed to be frictionless.
The consequences ripple outward. Adolescent gambling has been linked to financial strain, damaged relationships, and worse mental and physical health. It travels with other risky behaviors too — alcohol use, substance use, risky driving, and delinquency — and early problem gambling has been shown to predict substance use disorders years down the line.
How to Keep Up
Here’s the uncomfortable part for those of us thinking about teens: while the gambling industry has innovated aggressively — mobile apps, in-game betting, algorithmically tailored promotions — prevention education largely hasn’t. Our review of the intervention literature spanning three decades found only a handful of programs that met basic evaluation standards, and most of those were built for face-to-face delivery, some dating back to the early 1990s. In other words, many of the tools available to educators today were designed for a gambling landscape that no longer exists — one without smartphones, without in-game wagering, and without algorithmic ads targeting teenagers scrolling social media.
That gap matters because how you deliver prevention content may be just as important as what you say. Teenagers who are gambling online, often on their phones, are unlikely to be moved by a static pamphlet or a single lecture on the dangers of betting – or even the terms we use to describe what they are doing.
Can Game-Based Learning Help Prevent Problem Gambling
This is where a newer generation of interventions is trying something different: meeting teens in the format they already spend their time in.
dfusion is collaborating with researchers at Cambridge Health Alliance, Division on Addiction to develop One example moving through the research pipeline is Level Up, a hybrid curriculum high schoolers that pairs traditional educator-led instruction with interactive simulations. Rather than simply telling students that chasing losses is dangerous, the simulation lets them experience it — managing a virtual “wallet” against a personal goal (saving for a car, a concert, or college application fees) while navigating a string of simulated betting scenarios with realistic wins, losses, and social pressure. The idea is to let students feel the anxiety of a loss or the false confidence of a win inside a consequence-free environment, then unpack those reactions in a facilitated discussion afterward.
The broader research on educational technology backs up why this format matters: well-designed educational games and simulations have been associated with meaningfully better learning outcomes than traditional instruction alone, and they tend to produce stronger cognitive and attitudinal shifts — exactly the kind of shift you’d want if the goal is changing how a teenager thinks about a bet before they place it, not just what they know about gambling odds in the abstract.
Get Involved: Beta Testing Launches Fall 2026
Level Up is moving from concept to prototype, and we’re looking for high school teachers and students who want to help shape it. Beta testing is set to begin in fall 2026, and we’re recruiting educators willing to give feedback on the curriculum, along with students interested in trying out the simulations and sharing honest feedback on what works, what doesn’t, and what would make it more engaging. If you’re a teacher concerned about the impact you are seeing of sports-betting among students — or a student who wants a say in building a tool made for people your age — we’d love to hear from you.
About the Author
BA Laris is the Principal Investigator on the Level Up project and Director of STEMPlay Labs powered by dfusion, inc. For more than 30 years, she has worked at the intersection of health promotion and educational technology, developing programs designed to support healthy adolescent development. Her work has focused on translating behavior change and learning theory into engaging, evidence-based tools for young people, including web-based and game-based interventions used in schools across the country. She has led numerous federally funded projects, including Phase I and Phase II SBIR awards from the Department of Education IES, and has partnered with researchers, educators, and students to build resources grounded equally in rigorous science and real classroom needs.
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