Walking into a party, all the high school boys are huddled up in the corner, not smoking, but sports betting. This may seem better than smoking a cigarette, but it’s still an addiction growing large for young boys. For certain male friend groups, if you don’t bet on sports, you don’t fit in.
An overwhelming 84% of boys whose friends gamble report that they participate in gambling themselves, according to Common Sense Media. It’s a disease that is spreading, and young men will most likely fall into the trap if they are around it.
Throughout ETHS, many male students are victims of sports betting. An anonymous senior said he started betting on-and-off sophomore year, but now he is betting multiple times a week.
“It’s huge now, and I especially see it within my own friends. Some of them are downloading these accounts. I’m like, ‘When did you start doing this, and why?’” said the anonymous senior.
It’s the new scrolling, the new addiction, and even the sports gamblers themself know it. One of the many draws that sports betting has on teenage boys is a parlay. A parlay is a term for combining several wagers into a single bet. All parts of the wagers, also known as “legs”, must win for the payout. If the parlay hits, the earnings are much larger than those of an individual bet. The hook is that the parlay always seems to only miss by one, leading the gamblers to believe that they are closer to winning more money than they think.
“My friends made a four-leg parlay, and each put $100 in it. They selected four teams to win and then lost on the first leg,” said the anonymous sports bettor.
Sports betting seems like something you can do together. Teenage boys can curate a big parlay, and all put a bunch of money on the wager. It’s an event all your friends are partaking in, you don’t want to miss out if the bet pays out. However, it’s an addiction, and teenage boys are the prime target of this issue.
Like all gambling, sports betting is illegal until you are 21-years-old, but with the various online apps that offer sports betting, the legality of it is no issue. You can either lie about your age or put in your parents’ information to get past the age barrier. Various apps include FanDuel, DraftKings, PrizePicks, Fanatics, and Fliff.
Most sports bettors believe sports betting is such a great way to make quick money or to bring people together. However, it does the opposite. The excitement of watching a game quickly dies after your friend’s bet doesn’t hit. At that point, all the gamblers either want to turn the game off right there or live bet on the rest of the game. This is ruining the art of watching sports. Many teenage boys don’t care for a sports game that they didn’t bet on. What happened to the love of the game? To watch because you get enough dopamine from seeing your team score, not because you need the rush of adrenaline that having hundreds of dollars on the line gives you. There used to be pride in coming to your high school class, having your OG team win the night before, but now the only pride is if your bet hit and if your payout was more than your friend’s.
“It’s like a sword crutch, checking your phone, your parlay, no one wants to see that. That’s what I hate, my friends and I are constantly talking about it and checking what’s happening with our bets,” said the anonymous senior. “It brings down the mood, and also it’s not what you should be focused on, especially when you’re with your friends or family, and that’s an issue.”
In the past year, 41% of all 14-17-year-old boys across the United States have gambled, and a third of that has been sports-related, according to Common Sense Media. That is around 1,230,000 young American boys, which is an alarming number of underage sports betters. And the effect it has goes beyond just that high percentage of boys who do it; their families and friends can be hurt in the process.
The addiction to sports betting has more victims than just the students who bet. Several Evanston students feel the negative effects of their friends, boyfriends, and family participating in this type of gambling.
“People in my life that I’m really close to are just insane sports bettors. They love it, and they bet way too much money, and it affects their moods, which then comes on to me, and affects my life, because they get really angry if their bet goes wrong,” voiced an anonymous female student.
Gambling is illegal until you’re 21 for a reason. The frontal lobe does not fully develop until at least 25 years of age in boys. Because of the undeveloped brains of teenage boys, this form of gambling can easily be projected into a different form of addiction.
“It releases the chemical dopamine. So your brain’s always going to want it, want it, want it,” said the school counselor. “And eventually it’s going to want more because it’s not getting met, and then you are going to do things that are riskier and riskier.”
Sports betting is at an all-time high more than ever. With various apps, the love of sports, and the desire for money, young men are becoming victims of this addiction. Don’t be next.
