Gambling Among Young People, 837 kB

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Introduction
Most surveys on the gambling habits of young people are questionnaires that have been carried out in
Western countries. Normally, young people have been asked about how often they gamble, how much
money they normally bet and what games they bet on. In this review, studies that represent a larger group
of young people, for example Swedish adolescents of a certain age, are presented. One problem with
these studies is that nearly all of them have been carried out in schools, which means that there is no data
available as regards young people who do not go to school. A further problem with school surveys is that
a large proportion of pupils are away from school everyday, often those that have problems and who
might be in a risk group as regards pathological gambling or other addictions. Moreover, knowledge
about how the gambling habits have developed over time is lacking since in school surveys the questions
have only been put with regard to the adolescents’gambling habits at a particular point in time.
How much do young people gamble?
Most studies on the gambling habits of young people have been carried out in the USA and Canada,
with a few studies from Europe and Australia. What all these studies have in common is the fact that a
majority, 60 – 90 per cent, of all the young people in the studies have at some time in their lives
gambled and that young people gamble less than adults (3–14). The American researcher Jacobs has
reviewed studies on the gambling habits of Canadian and American adolescents. This review indicates
that over 60 per cent of the adolescents in these countries at the end of the 1990s had gambled (7).
Two regional studies have been carried out in Australia indicating that gambling is fairly established
among young Australians. At the end of the 1990s, 90 per cent of adolescents in Melbourne, 15 to 18
years old, said that they had gambled at one time or other (15), while approximately 70 per cent of the
young people aged between 11 and 19 in the Australian Capital Territory (that includes urban and
rural areas as well as small towns) said that they had gambled in the last year (16).
Studies from the Nordic countries indicate that games are as common a phenomena here as in the
rest of the Western world. Rossow and Hansen conducted a major study in Norway which indicates
that almost 80 per cent of Norwegian adolescents, aged between 12 and 18, have gambled in the last
year (12). Swedish adolescents gamble nearly as often according to the only Swedish population study
on gambling that has been conducted; 75 per cent of Swedish adolescents aged between 15 and 17 said
that they had bet money on a game in the last year (17). One difference between Sweden and Norway is
that fact that Norwegian adolescents gamble more often, more regularly and for greater sums than their
Swedish counterparts. This does not, however, apply to all Norwegian adolescents, most play only
sporadically and for smaller sums, while 10 per cent of Norwegian adolescents represent 50 per cent of
the gambling (12). The Swedish study indicates that only a fairly small proportion, 16 per cent, of
adolescents gamble regularly (every week) compared to just over 40 per cent of adults (17).
The Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and other Drugs (CAN) conduct an annual drug
habit study of pupils in ninth grade, which has included questions about gambling since 2000, and
since 2004, adolescents in their second year of upper secondary education have been asked about
their gambling habits. These studies indicate that gambling is a common spare time activity above all
among boys. Approximately 40 per cent of boys both in grades seven to nine and in upper secondary
education gamble once a month, 20 per cent of girls do so (18, 19, 20).
According to Jacobs’ review of studies conducted in the USA and Canada, gambling among
young people in North America increased during the 1980s and 1990s. At the beginning of the 1980s,
45 per cent of North American adolescents had gambled, while 66 per cent said that they had done so
by the end of the 1990s (7). According to the CAN’s studies, gambling has neither increased nor
decreased among Swedish ninth graders during the period 2000–2004 (18, 19). Questions with regard
to gambling on the Internet were included in the latest study from 2005, but it is still impossible to
distinguish a change in how much ninth graders gamble (18). These results, however, do not mean to
say that no changes have occurred as regards adolescent’s gambling since young people who are
younger or older than those in the ninth grade have not been included in these studies (only figures
from 2004 and 2005 are available as concerns pupils at upper secondary school level).