If you want to gamble in America these days, you have more ways than ever to put your money on the line. You have the real casino, the casino on your phone, sports betting, cryptocurrencies, meme stocks – even complex financial products like zero-day options can give you quick risk. For young men in particular, it’s an enticing, if somewhat unsettling, prospect. But for a variety of businesses, from sports betting to investment apps, an increased willingness to take risks means business is booming. The boys who like to bet bank is open and businesses are making as many withdrawals as possible.
The level to which gaming has become normalized in the United States in recent years is astounding. Americans legally bet a record $119.84 billion on sports in 2023, up from $93 billion in 2022. Since the Supreme Court in 2018 struck down a federal law banning sports betting, more than three dozen many States have adopted it in one form or another. Seven states have also legalized iGaming, meaning blackjack, roulette and online slots.
And even if they don’t explicitly gamble, free trading apps like Robinhood have enticed a growing number of everyday people to invest — for fun, to alleviate boredom, to try to make some extra money. While many people have used the apps to build a stable portfolio, a good portion of them are doing high-risk day trading or piling into meme stocks like GameStop, AMC or, as people hope Donald Trump, his new public social networks. business. Crypto is back, and this time, almost no one is pretending that the goal is anything other than “increasing numbers.” Many video games also have a gambling aspect, which encourages children and adolescents to take risks.
Although many people from all walks of life participate in these trends, data suggests that the crowds are younger and male. A 2023 NCAA survey found that sports gambling was prevalent among young adults, particularly on college campuses and among Black and Latino respondents. Pew Research found in 2022 that men and people under 50 were more likely to bet on sports than women and those over 50. Younger men also tend to be more interested in trading crypto stocks and memes.
It’s not surprising. Men tend to take more financial risks than women. As investors, they are more likely to be overconfident, which often leads them to trade more and, as a result, receive lower returns. Men generally play more than women, and they have been found to have lower levels of impulsive coping in gaming contexts.
The precise reason for this behavior is difficult to pin down, said Timothy Fong, a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA and co-director of its gambling studies program. There is a cultural component: In the 1980s, young people Men were fed movies like “Wall Street,” shown flashy cars and money, and told that greed was a good thing. In the 90s and early 2000s, they were sold in more traditional forms of gambling and poker. Today, they are marketed in sports betting and cryptocurrencies. But it also goes further than that.
“For years, when we’ve studied gambling behaviors as well as other addictive behaviors, the trend has always been that men are affected more than women,” Fong said. “People are wondering: Is it a biological risk? Is it a cultural risk? Is it a psychological risk or a social risk factor? And basically what I can say is that it’s probably a combination.”
There can be FOMO, such as fear of missing out. Younger men see their friends playing crypto or betting on sports, and they want to participate. Many of them have income that they’re not doing more productive things with, especially in the wake of a pandemic that saw many consumers once try to save while thinking, “Hey, crap.” Maybe 40 years ago, a 28-year-old had a mortgage and a family to support. Now he no longer has those responsibilities and can spend his disposable income on the stock he just saw recommended on Reddit or a bet on whether the next pitch in a baseball game will be a ball or a strike.
For years, when we have studied gambling behaviors as well as other addictive behaviors, the trend has always been that men are affected more than women.
Kahlil Philander, a professor at Washington State University who focuses on public policy and gambling, said this gaming boom is compounded by a novelty effect. Many young people are exposed to the game for the first time. and a wide variety of products are aggressively marketed to them. All the advertising dollars spent on sports betting platforms and crypto exchanges, for example, amplified the exposure effect. The other part of the story is that many of these people have never gambled before: unlike a 60-year-old who has gambled before in this kind of situation, they haven’t internalized the downsides.
“If there are risks or risk mitigation strategies that individuals can adopt, they may not have learned those lessons yet,” Philander said. “It can lead to higher levels of involvement, more harmful activities, all sorts of things that more experienced people might have discovered on their own one way or another.”
At the heart of it all is technology, the idea that men don’t need to go to the casino to place a bet or call a broker to trade a stock – they can just pull out their phone.
“The technology that brings us to this intersection between gaming, gaming, investing and financial risk, that technology barrier is so low right now,” Fong said.
For some young men, a certain nihilism towards the economy encourages them to take risks. This appears in films like “Dumb Money”, about the GameStop phenomenon, or “This Is Not Financial Advice”, a documentary on dogecoin where the protagonists are portrayed as David against Goliath – the hedge funds, but also the system economic as a whole.
“We are in a society where there are many new forms of gambling where the nature of investing and taking financial risk is very different than it was before,” Philander said.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who tends to wiggle his fingers from time to time, described the changing nature of investing in his latest letter to Berkshire Hathaway investors.
“For a variety of reasons, markets today exhibit much more casino-like behavior than when I was young,” he writes. “The casino now resides in many homes and tempts the occupants daily.”
Along with the increase in new customers, problem gambling behavior is increasing, particularly among young men. A 2023 report on the prevalence of gambling in New Jersey – where sports betting and online gaming is legal and where Atlantic City is located – found that men had twice the rate of high-risk problem gambling as women and that those aged 18 to 44 were at the highest risk. The New Jersey report identified a significant prevalence of high-risk stock trading among young men. In the state, which has pushed to overturn the federal law banning sports betting, calls to its problem gambling hotline have tripled in five years, with people ages 25 to 34 the most more likely to contact him.
The casino now resides in many homes and tempts the occupants daily
Warren Buffett
Most players do not develop an addiction. According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, some 2.5 million Americans have a serious gambling problem, and another 5 to 8 million have a problem it considers mild or moderate. This represents a small part of the population. Many people make a number of bets and end up failing, or they take a gamble once in a while and everything is fine. Public interest in crypto ebbs and flows, and just because someone has dabbled in meme stocks for a while doesn’t mean they live on Wall Street Bets forever.
Still, the explosion of gambling in the United States is worrying, especially without much done in the way of regulation, education, or safeguards to control problem gambling. At least a sports betting app will make someone slow down if they go too far – there are virtually no protections in place if your day trading habit gets out of control, and many people don’t even realize of what they are. to do is really to play. Fong told me that he sees patients who have lost thousands of dollars gambling in stocks and insists that they simply didn’t time the market well.
“The only question I’ll ask people I’ll say, ‘Is this behavior improving your life or creating problems?'” he said. “And that’s all.”
Casinos, sportsbooks and trading platforms want to make money from punters, and the way to do that is to get them to play more, not less. Although many young men will eventually give up their gambling habits, not all will – and the company hopes to turn them into lifelong customers.
Emilie Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and economics.
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