Study Shows Gaming in Youth Not Connected to Gambling in Adulthood
There’s no direct connection between youth gaming and adult gambling, according to a recent study.
Key Facts:
- The Economic and Social Research Institute carried out a study looking at gaming and gambling
- It found no connection between youth gaming and adult gambling
- It does, however, call for action to deal with certain issues
The Economic and Social Research Institute has released information about a recent study it carried out. This study aimed to determine if there was a link between gaming as a youth and gambling as an adult. It found no clear connection between the two.
The Study’s Findings
The study found that people who play video games during their youth aren’t necessarily going to gamble or indeed have problems related to gambling later on in life. It did, however, find that people in their late teens who game are more likely to gamble.
Specifically, those who regularly play video games at the age of 17 are 1.4 times more likely to be regular gamblers at the age of 20, compared to those who don’t play video games. This figure increases slightly as the age of young people goes up.
Those aged 20 who are regular video game players are 1.7 times more likely to have a habit of gambling. Older gamers therefore have a greater chance of becoming gamblers, presumably because of the gaming-style nature of casino games.
Details About the Study
Gretta Mohan, a senior research officer at the Economic and Social Research Institute, was the author of the study. It looked at data from the longitudinal study Growing Up in Ireland, which has been collecting data on more than 4,200 participating children born in 1998.
The children supplied information about their gaming activity when they were nine, 17 and 20. The study looked for any connection between the participants’ gaming habits growing up and their gambling activity as 20-year-olds. Mohan said the study looked at whether childhood gaming habits could predict adult gambling activity.
Further Findings
Here are some more key pieces of information that came to light through the study:
- Nearly 90% of 9-year-olds play video games on computers; two-thirds of them spend an hour gaming online on an average day.
- Of the 17-year-olds, 39.6% played games online regularly.
- A marginally higher (41.1%) percentage of 20-year-olds played games online.
- Ten per cent of teenagers spent at least two hours gaming on a regular weekday.
- Around twenty per cent of teenagers spent a minimum of two hours on weekends.
- Young men were more likely to practise gambling than young women.
When it came to gambling, the study found that 3.6% of 20-year-olds said they’d gambled at least once a week. The percentage of 20-year-olds who admitted to gambling once a month was also 3.6%. The term ‘gambling’ in this context doesn’t cover lottery games.
It was also shown that gambling becomes more popular as people get older. Of those involved in the study, 2.9% of those aged 17 gambled online, while for those aged 20, the figure increased by more than three times to 9%.
Summary and Comments
ESRI’s report about the study mentioned a growing concern among many parents about how easily accessible gambling opportunities are in modern society. Gaming might seem like less harmful than the two, but many video games have started introducing elements of gambling.
A prime example of this is loot boxes, which contain random virtual items. A player has no idea what’s inside until they’ve purchased and opened the box. The items might be useful to the player, or they might not be. People, therefore, take a gamble when purchasing loot boxes.
These and other forms of gambling in video games, namely social casino games, didn’t exist back in 2007 when the study surveyed its participants. They would have been nine years old when asked about their gaming habits at this stage.
Gretta Mohan has said the following about the need for further research:
Given the rapidly evolving nature of online gaming and gambling, ongoing monitoring of these behaviours in younger and older cohorts is crucial.– Gretta Mohan, ESRI Senior Research Officer Comments on Gambling Study, Breaking News
She explained that further research is needed because recent innovations, such as loot boxes, weren’t around during the study’s early stages. Because young people are exposed to them, they could affect people’s likelihood of gambling as they get older.
