Boston Globe: "High schoolers are placing sports bets online. Experts warn of growing risks of addiction."

"At Fenway High, Angel Benitez even tried to document the use among classmates. For a humanities project last spring, Benitez and his friends surveyed their classmates about wagering on sports and whether their friends outside of school were also betting.

They spoke to 90 teens and found that 82 of them – more than 90 percent — were gambling on sports.

“I was like, whoa. I didn’t know that many people at our school were gambling,” said Benitez, who graduated and this fall is attending Northeastern University. “Not only is it at our school, but kids our age everywhere are gambling.”

That does not surprise Jennifer Knight-Levine, cofounder of the SAFE Coalition, a nonprofit that supports young people facing mental health and substance abuse challenges.

“Youth gambling on online platforms in school is absolutely happening across the Commonwealth,” Knight-Levine said."

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“Sports betting has become so normalized that it’s viewed as harmless play"

THANK YOU The Boston Globe for inviting SAFE Coalition and CEO Jennifer Knight-Levine to participate in this conversation.

At SAFE, we have seen a significant increase in our youth engaging in online sports betting...or are a student athlete and feel the impact of betting on their athletic experience.

Don’t have access to the Globe article? Below is the SAFE segment!

"The SAFE Coalition is a social services agency that provides mental health and substance use counseling for young people in west-central Massachusetts. Starting last fall, the organization began seeing an influx of children who are struggling in school because they are betting on their phones. In response, the organization has added questions about gambling to its intake process, said Jennifer Knight-Levine, chief executive and cofounder of the nonprofit

Knight-Levine said she has noticed a trend: Many of the children who admit to betting regularly on sports do not view the activity as gambling, even when significant sums of money are involved.

“Sports betting has become so normalized that it’s viewed as harmless play, like video games,” Knight-Levine said. “A teenager will think of someone who is gambling as an old person in a casino or a smoky room, while sports betting is largely viewed as fun, exciting, and socially acceptable.”

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Link to Globe article -> (subscription may be required) 

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/03/28/metro/gambling-sports-addiction-sportsbook-betting-massachusetts-gaming/

For more about the SAFE Coalition visit them online at ->   https://www.safecoalitionma.org/

Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell was joined by NCAA president Charlie Baker on Thursday at a panel to announce a gambling prevention program. MATTHEW J. LEE/GLOBE STAFF