A gambling addiction relies on one simple principle: chase the loss. Listen to any gambling addict and it becomes obvious they are no longer trying to make money. They have wagered themselves into a hole and are now forced to bet and bet until they can get out. Much as an alcoholic will have a drink to ease a hangover, many gamblers see their addiction as the solution to that same vice. This is what makes a gambling addiction so dangerous. The drug they rely on is not a chemical substance, they aren’t just urged on by dopamine or some artificial high, they continue to bet out of desperation, out of necessity.
Prior to 2018, sports betting addictions were relatively limited. In order to place a bet you had to contact a bookie who would set odds, balance your money and overall make sports gambling a whole ordeal. But recently this changed. Following the 2018 Supreme Court decision to allow sports betting in each state, the key to a crippling addiction has been placed in the pockets of every single American. Apps like DraftKings and FanDuel allow people to bet whenever, wherever and on whatever they want. This change has not gone without consequence, Journal of the American Medical Association found that searches for help with gambling addiction have gone up 23% since the 2018 supreme court decision.
As Americans legally tumble towards a nationwide gambling crisis, the teenage population is following suit. Although locked behind ID verification, sports betting apps are being accessed by America’s youth en masse. These teens lack the impulse control of the adult population, leading to fast addiction and fast loss. Due to the recency of this issue, little is being done to curb it, leading to millions of adolescents being forced to learn for themselves that the house always wins.
Since the first legal online sportsbooks went live in Missouri Dec. 1, 2025, sports gambling has risen rapidly in prevalence among all age ranges. Though it is a legal requirement that gamblers are 18 and older on all apps and 21 and older on others, many teens have managed to circumvent this system.
“I started sports betting about two years ago,” Ladue student Mitchell Green said. “I started with PrizePicks because I had my brother’s log in. He was 18 at the time, which is how old you had to be to start.”
Nearly every app has some variation of a “free cash” offer to entice new users. Those who join will be given a small amount of money to place their first bet; but what they’re really being given the push down the slope of sports betting while maintaining the illusion that they won’t lose any “real” money. For most, the illusion shatters, and that slope carries them straight into bank account negatives.
“You can’t win,” Green said. “I lost about $200 [on one app] and then about two months ago, I got DraftKing because I got my parents’ login. At the start, you get that free $300 [in starting money], then you miss all those bets, then you just keep putting in money.”
If it’s become commonplace to lose in perpetuity when sports gambling, the question arises: why do people keep doing it? One answer is simple—money.
“I wasn’t thrill seeking,” Fish said. “It was just to simply make money. That’s why I didn’t bet every game. I didn’t bet every week. I stick with NFL, and I only bet selectively on games that I felt very, very comfortable with and games that I had done research on.”
Even though most sports gamblers know that statistics say they’ll end up in the red with all the others, some still do it for the hope of raking in the green. Other gamblers get into sports betting for the potential to make friends and build community.
“My dad and my brother started sports betting maybe a couple months ago,” Bay said. “I felt left out, so I joined. Me and my best friend really just bet on college football games. We bet like $2 a game, so it’s not very high stakes.”
No matter the initial reason for someone’s start in sports gambling, the fact is that sports gambling apps are just like the traditional casinos of yore. Their end goal doesn’t have in end; they want to perpetually enthrall the gambler, keeping them pouring in money that they don’t have a realistic hope of earning back. Countless means keep sports betters glued to apps.
“Advertisements are very appealing,” Ladue student Steve Marsh said. “They really entrap you and make you interested to support your favorite team and make money quickly.”
With all of the advertising that sports gambling platforms put out, both on screens and off, gambling has become almost synonymous with sports fandoms themselves.
“Sports Network broadcasts it,” Ladue teacher Benett Copes said. “We have stadiums that are named after the sports [betting sites]. When you watch a hockey game, and they’ve got FanDuel printed around the ice, it’s like the whole game is sponsored by a betting organization.”
As sports gambling has become more accessible through the countless apps and sites that facilitate it, many programs have begun targeting their advertisements specifically toward young people.
“They have these promotions,” Green said. “[They’re] for kids, because they have stuff like Barstool on there. I know that old people are not watching Barstool.”
A lot of the problems students are now facing are not unique to sports gambling; losing money, becoming so hooked that it becomes hard to stop, these are problems that all gamblers face. In spite of all the commonalities, sports gambling is a separate issue to may gamblers.
“I always feel like poker is a lot more skill than chance,” Marsh said. “In poker, you really play the player, play someone else, rather than relying on chance, like sports betting”
Because it’s not based on their own skill, gamblers maintain the idea that a win could happen at any moment, despite the odds being in anyone’s favor but theirs. It’s not just the odds stacked against them; it’s advertisements, illusions of community, and the falsified future of coming out on top.
“There is a very dark side of gambling,” Marsh said. “You can get into very crippling addictions, mental health issues, where you decide to bet all your money and just lose all of it.”
Gambling, along with sports betting, has always been seen as a somewhat seedy pastime. However, states have recently begun to pass laws legalizing sports gambling. The negative nature of gambling is not lost on the voters, this can be seen with Missouri’s sports betting law passing with only 50.05% of votes. Many are against the legalization of sports betting, for many, the number one factor being the addictive nature of sports betting.
“About a year ago, [I started on] Fliff,” Ladue student Parker Bellagio said. “I did the daily free dollar, and I always lost it. Then I put my mom’s account on there and said I was 21 and lost 100 bucks. And then I tried to earn it all back. I just kept losing. I had to get a job so I could pay my mom back.”
The addictiveness of gambling is not a baseless claim. The National Council on Problem Gambling cites that 16% of online sports betters show behavior that points towards addictive gambling. Although it may appear to function differently compared to other substance-based addictions, gambling releases similarly rewarding chemicals in response to winning money.
“It’s the same dopamine release [as other addictions],” Bellagio said. “You’re just doing it differently. You’re not doing an activity that releases actual dopamine, it’s this fake excitement, even though you know you’re about to lose money.”
Along with the release of dopamine, wins provide assurance from the fear of a near miss. Not only can this feel good in the moment, but it can also lead to crushing losses that confirm anxieties.
“Winning [brings] relief,” Fish said. “I don’t typically celebrate the wins as much as losing feels absolutely awful.”
The disastrous reality of losing money often leads to even further desperation. The cycle ultimately continues, with higher bets being placed in an attempt to win back the previously lost bets.
“It’s called ‘chasing your losses,’” Fish said. “If you are constantly trying to chase your losses, because [in your mind] you think that eventually ‘it’s going to turn out right for you, you’re going to win one of these,’ I think [that’s] incredibly dangerous for people.”
Along with the ruthless self-fulfilling cycle of sports betting, the recent legalization has made it easier than ever to fall into that cycle.
“I’ll go somewhere to watch a game, and I will see particularly young men just on their phones, on their betting apps,” Ladue teacher Maggie Grand said. “I was just somewhere a couple weeks ago, and I saw a couple of guys just sitting at a table together, not even speaking. They had their jerseys on, they were watching the TV and they’re not even talking to each other. They’re just scrolling on their DraftKings app.”
This recent prevalence is far from just an observed phenomenon. Siena Research Institute found that 22% of all Americans have an active sports betting account. Along with this, 52% of men aged 18-49 had an active sports betting account. Many factors have led to the observed increase in sports betting, one of the most important being just how easy it is to bet now.
“It’s so frictionless to make [bets],” Copes said. “It is just so simple. It’s not like, I can just place [the bet] at the start of the game, and [then] I can’t do anything else either. You can [bet on] every single thing throughout the entire game.”
Tied in with this ease of use is the increase in advertisements, leading to more eyes being on these apps. These ads often bolster deals that are ‘too good to pass up.’
“What I see a lot of are these deals [that try to] pull you in,” Grand said. “You sign up for this [app], and you get free money, or you [bet on] this and you get extra money to bet with. And so I do think that it’s just like any other business. They’re trying to make as much money as possible.”
One of the criticisms of these ads have been their tendencies to appeal to younger people.
“Seeing ads on television, with famous people and highly recognized faces, it’s got to be incredibly difficult for some young people to say no to that,” Fish said.
With gambling apps being so present in modern sports, sports betting companies have put forth an extreme effort to make their presence known to every potential ‘customer’.
“We’re in a society where every kid has a cell phone,” Marsh said. “Every game they [watch] is gonna have some type of [gambling] advertisement. I assume we’re gonna see an increase of gambling apps on [kids’] phones.”
All of these aspects work together to foster the current reality of teenage gambling—the unfortunate truth is that addiction does not go away, it will grow and grow for these students until it consumes them.
“The [team I bet on] were playing, and I was like, ‘I have homework, or I could sit and watch this game’,” Bellagio said. “Then, I’d sit and watch the game.”
For adults at or above the legal age of gambling, it can be easy to see signs of addiction, but for an undeveloped teenage brain, these indicators can go undetected.
“It’s just that first 300 you get, and you’ll put in five bucks and you get 300, that’s a really good deal,” Green said. “But after that, it’s just downhill. So you just put in more money, because obviously you’re gonna lose that 300. Unless you [win], but eventually, even if you [win] you will lose the next one. It just keeps drawing you back in.”
