Gambling News - June 2005 Edition

"Online Poker Snaring More Teens"

Growing alarm over the growing number of youths playing online poker

Oscar Santana, a Brooklyn 11 th grader who lives with his parents and two siblings in Bedford-Stuyvesant, comes home from school everyday, attends to his homework as quickly as he can and then fires up his computer to play online poker for the evening. Alarm is rising over the growing number of youths playing online poker. For many students, online poker is becoming the new American pastime. Santana, who is a member of his high school’s chess team, isn’t worried that he will become addicted to gambling. “I’ve got everything under control. I can tell myself to stop at any time,” he says. “Since I’ve been playing, I haven’t lost. I just love playing and I don’t worry about becoming addicted”

The problem is not going to resolve itself either. A national study, published last month by the Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania, found an 84 percent increase in weekly card playing by males between the ages of 14 and 22. The study covered the years 2003 to 2004. The same study also found that weekly card players were more likely to gamble on the Internet even if they were under the age of 18. Another study, conducted by the International Center for Youth Gambling at McGill, found that out of a sample of 1,100 twelve to seventeen year olds, 42 percent gambled online, but not for money, while almost six percent gambled for real money. The remaining number of children in the study said that they did not gamble.

Heiko Ganzer, a therapist who specializes in gambling addiction, says, “This generation is in love with computers and poker. Unfortunately, parents and teachers don’t have a clue as to what’s going on.”

Fears about its popularity among youth and the potentially dangerous consequences of online poker are not baseless. Rina Gupta, co-director of a youth gambling research center at McGill University in Montreal, agrees with the fears. “There is definitely a reason for concern and problems later down the line,” said Gupta. “We are receiving numerous requests from the states for prevention information. Someone calls and says, ‘I am a counselor in a school and there are a lot of kids playing poker. Can you help?’” The problem is fairly recent, so there isn’t much information available to help. “This is a new phenomenon, there is very little research yet on youth and online poker addiction,” said Gupta. “What we do know is that poker, including online poker, has caught on and is spreading like wildfire.”

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