Teen gambling surges, experts urge parents to talk early

Gambling among teen boys has crossed from a fringe concern into a youth health problem that schools and families can no longer ignore. A recent survey found that 36% of boys ages 11 to 17 had gambled in the past year, and the rate rose to 49% among 17-year-old boys.

That surge is landing in a policy gap. A 2023 systematic review described gambling disorder in youth as an emerging public health problem and said adolescents and young adults are a vulnerable age group for developing gambling-related problems. The concern has sharpened as sports betting became easier to access after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018, opening the door to broader state legalization and a larger national betting market.

The numbers help explain why the issue now sits at the intersection of mental health, consumer protection and school policy. Teens are growing up in an environment where betting is far more visible and mainstream than it was a decade ago. Pew Research Center’s 2025 sports-betting topline survey, part of its American Trends Panel, shows how common betting has become among adults, reinforcing the normalization that young people see around them.

Schools are also being pushed to respond. On April 9, 2026, the National Federation of State High School Associations launched a free course for coaches, administrators, student-athletes and parents on the risks of sports betting. The move reflects a growing recognition that the warning signs are now showing up in high schools, where gambling behavior can overlap with other risk-taking patterns.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already tracks those patterns through its Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which monitors health-risk behaviors among high school students nationwide. That makes youth gambling part of a broader adolescent public-health picture already familiar to educators and parents, from substance use to other risky behaviors that can escalate before adults notice.

Psychiatrist Dr. Sue Varma has focused on how parents can start the conversation with children before habits take hold. With nearly half of 17-year-old boys reporting gambling in the past year, the stakes are no longer abstract. The challenge now is whether families, schools and regulators can keep pace with a market that has become both easier to enter and harder for teenagers to ignore.