Common Sense Media Study On Gambling Lacks Common Sense

By the time I was a freshman in high school — and to give some semblance of time here, when I was a freshman in high school, Guns N’ Roses was still nearly three years away from entering the Billboard charts, no one outside of Chicago had heard of Oprah Winfrey, and Gordon Gecko had yet to utter “Greed is good” — I was gambling.

My buddy Mark heard about this thing called “fantasy football,” and we had our first draft in his room in September 1986. Dan Fouts went first. I drafted Tony Franklin, the kicker, in the first round. (Don’t judge.)

Meanwhile, in earth science class, I was betting with my buddy Matt on NFL sides. 

Later that year, the three of us bet on Strat-O-Matic baseball games we played against one another.

Soon after, poker blossomed in my friend group and beyond, and it wasn’t a rare occurrence to see 15 of us in my friend Tom’s basement playing cards. We had two tables running. For years, well into college, if someone wanted to play poker, getting five of us together was as easy as making an emergency breakthrough (look it up, Zoomers).

By junior year of high school, one of our guys had a guy, and we were placing bets through him on football. I noticed how we tended to lose more often than not, so I decided to eliminate the middle man and be the bookie myself. This lasted for a half-season, with friends of mine bringing envelopes of cash to study hall. I quit — too much pressure, not cut out for it.

But yeah. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was an avid sports bettor, fantasy player, and card player. I wasn’t alone. Virtually every dude I knew who liked sports bet on them in one form or another and poker was everywhere.

Which is why I’m wildly unimpressed by the pearl-clutching study by Common Sense Media that showed a third of boys aged 11-17 have gambled in the last year.

A third? That’s it? Um, wow?

Boys are betting!

The study got tons of traction when it dropped last week. From coverage on The Today Show to politicians demanding that something must be done, moral panic over young boys gambling reached a fever pitch for a news cycle.

The study blamed everything you would expect it to, from PASPA being overturned and the “aggressive advertising and media saturation that promotes betting as a fun, easy, and common daily habit” to loot boxes and advertising and normalization on social media.

I’m not going to sit here and argue that the study is wrong. After all, everything above is true enough, and my 16-year-old son, who does not gamble, tells me all the time about how he sees a non-stop barrage of gambling (Kalshi-included) ads on his Instagram feed. But to all that I say, “Yeah? And?”

Meaning, this isn’t an “oh-my-god-boys-are-gambling” story to me. Rather, this is an “oh-my-god-boys-are-gambling-a-bit-differently-than-they-have-before” kind of thing.

The main — well, only — reason I say this is because this study is lacking something I’d say is pretty damn important: historical context.

Nowhere in the study does it say how boys used to gamble or at what rates. In fact, the study repeatedly frames adolescent gambling as something newly emergent, or newly alarming, without offering any evidence that boys are gambling more than they used to.

“The reality is that we’re at an inflection point,” writes Jim Steyer, CEO, founder, and board co-chair of Common Sense Media in the introduction to the study. “We can either let gambling become normalized during boys’ most vulnerable developmental years or we can act now — with education, safeguards, and real accountability.”

Well, sure, let’s add education, safeguards, and accountability, but let’s not pretend we’re at an “inflection point.” 

Then there’s this from the study itself: “Gambling has become increasingly visible and accessible in young people’s lives, reshaping the environments where children and teens learn, play, and socialize.”

This is based on no historical comparison whatsoever. Is gambling different today than it was for kids in 1986? Yes it is. But just because I didn’t have a smartphone back then didn’t mean I couldn’t take the Patriots and the points or bet the table max holding five of a kind in seven-card-stud, deuces and one-eyed-jacks wild.

Shall I go on? I’ll go on.

“While 14% report actively searching for gambling content or following accounts that post about it, most exposure is passive.”

In this case, it’s talking about online. Again, just because it’s appearing online doesn’t mean it wasn’t appearing before online existed. I was “passively” introduced to fantasy football. I “passively” introduced Strat-O-Matic baseball to my friends. Poker was word of mouth.

Obviously the internet makes things different, but that doesn’t mean the phenomenon is new.

Of course, I don’t have information detailing if my — and my friends’ — experience in 1986 was the norm or the outlier. Were 36% of boys gambling back then? No idea. But Common Sense Media doesn’t know either, and if they do, they’re certainly not telling.

Same ol’ story

To be clear, I’m not advocating for kids to gamble, and I’m not an idiot: Things are obviously different today due to the internet and smartphones.

There probably should be a closer look at all this and there probably should be laws limiting advertising on social media to kids.

Heck, when I’ve sat my 16-year-old down for one talk or another, I tell him how a few beers won’t hurt him, but I explain responsible drinking. I tell him how a little weed won’t kill him, but just about any other drug might. For booze and weed, I preach moderation and smart choices.

The gambling conversation has mostly been this: “Don’t gamble. You’ll be better off.”

So I get it. Kids and gambling, blech.

But this study makes it seem like this is new, that the cause for a third — a third! A third? — of boys gambling is the environment we now live in.

That the primary explanation for a third of boys gambling is the modern digital environment is nonsense. I gambled well before the internet, you gambled well before the internet, people gambled well before the internet.

This isn’t new. It’s just dressed in different clothes.