If gambling were a sport it’d be played by more Australian teenagers than anything else.
That’s according to analysis by The Australia Institute, which shows that while 480,000 Australian teenagers play soccer, and about 440,000 play basketball, more than 900,000 gamble. Despite the 18+ restriction on gambling, almost one in three (30%) 12-17-year-olds gamble. This increases to almost half (46%) of 18- and 19-year-olds, a rate that doesn’t decline until people are at least in their mid-20s. This means that the gambling habits young Australians develop when they are teenagers persist into adulthood.
Parents are well aware of the societal shift that has taken place since their youth. Not long ago, online gambling simply wasn’t an option, which means there was little incentive for gambling companies to saturate footy matches with so many ads that kids are now just as likely to discuss the odds as their favourite player. Free-to-air TV shows more than a million gambling ads a year, so it’s not surprising that 85 per cent of 12-17 year olds have seen a gambling ad on TV in the past month. Teenagers are growing up in a country with a serious gambling addiction. When all age groups are combined, Australians gamble more than any country in the world.
The Murphy Review was clear that “Australians do not like being flooded by messages and inducements to gamble online and worry about the effect this is having on children and young people.” Australia Institute polling research shows that initiatives to ban gambling advertising would be popular. But without this kind of policy change, gambling will continue to be normalised among young people.
2 Comments
if kids of 12 -17 are gambling hen what are their parents doing. They must have money to bet. All the laws rules and regulations will not stop this unless parents take control of their kids activities. There are laws against all sort of things but are broken every minute of the day. Once upon a time you couldn’t bet unless you went to the races but it didn’t stop people gambling with SP bookies. Don’t want kids gambling then parents take control
I'm not against gambling. A poker game between friends has the money moving around among friends and no one really loses badly. It's all in good fun.
The problem is: who controls the game and where does the money end up?
Currently, our country is being stripped of hard earned money from gambling losers. This money ends up in tax havens around the world and doesn't benefit Australia at all.
I'm all for a ban on gambling advertising... and while we're at it, ban horse, camel and greyhound racing until the animals are able to decide whether or not they want to race.
I'm sick of the scenes at the Melbourne cup with fashion harnessed people drinking to excess (gambling and alcohol -- a match made in heaven for those WHO CONTROL THE GAME) while watching horses being flogged around the track with a very real risk of injury and death. The jockeys have a choice to risk their lives. Horses don't.