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UKGC Highlights Youth Gambling Awareness
The Gambling Commission in the UK has an important role to play when it comes to keeping people safe, and this Safer Gambling Week, the statistics that the organisation collects have been circulated widely to build awareness of the problem of youth gambling.
The company creates a Young People and Gambling Report annually and the 2024 edition has shown some worrying signs, including a rise in the number of young people showing some of the signs of having a problem.
The data is gathered from nearly 4,000 students, and is collected by Ipsos in UK-based classrooms.
Youth Gambling Key Facts
An increase in gambling among the youth
A 4% increase from 2023: 27% of young people that gamble use their own money, 6% of 11-17 year old participate in regulated gambling activities.
Troubling trends in gambling habits
2% showed signs of problem gambling risks, 23% display no gambling related issues. The survey highlights an increase in minors lying about gambling or take money without permission.
The impact of gambling advertisements
A major factor to rising gambling youth rates is exposure to gambling ads. 62% of children reported seeing ads online, and 64% are exposed to offline ads (TV and mobile apps).
The Findings of 2024’s Report
The Young People and Gambling report found that 27% of young people who were surveyed had used their own money to gamble. Some of this is in Category D gambling machines such as claw grabbers and coin machines such as those you’d find in arcades. These are not regulated in terms of age restrictions. Perhaps more pertinent, though, was the fact that 21% had used their money on regulated gambling activities.
Roughly 6% of 11- to 17-year-olds engaged in regulated types of gambling, which is an alarming increase from 4% in the same survey in 2023.
Almost 2% of respondents were evaluated as being at risk for problem gambling, while 23% showed no signs of gambling-related issues.
Other questions in the study included whether minors had lied about their gambling activities and whether they had taken money without permission to gamble with. Both of these figures had risen significantly.
More than half of the young people surveyed have tried gambling in some form, which is much higher than the number of young people using alcohol or cigarettes.
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