“Should I put my SAAS on roulette?”
This was the question one of my new mates asked me just weeks into our university lives. It was proposed as a joke – but through a dangerous cocktail of peer pressure, shamelessness, and normalisation, we were soon making the 300-metre walk to the casino placed directly across the street from our student accommodation.
£500 was in his hand – an amount of disposable cash which seemed alien to us having left high school just a few months earlier. The colour red was chosen, and we watched on as the automated roulette table spun up, obviously too daunted to use a real one. The ball came to settle in number 19. Red. Muted celebrations through then-required Covid-masks ensued, but this result was far from a positive long-term success.
The whole idea – one that made us try and fail to find such a high in the years that followed – just seemed normal, but where does this sense of routine come from? One answer, sadly, lies with childhood.
Damning figures, procured and released by the charity Gambling Harm UK, show that 4.6% of 11 to 16-year-olds have suffered from gambling before. Simply put, out of every high school class, at least one pupil legally too young to gamble is likely to have done so to a dangerous and damaging level.
“The Genie is out of the bottle”
Ben Jones, director of Gambling Harm UK, believes an abundance of advertising is partly to blame for the current gambling culture when it comes to both children and young adults:
“Children are growing up in an environment where gambling is part of everyday life. It’s completely normal… to see things sponsored by gambling adverts. For children and young people, that extends far beyond what we might know on TV because they consume a lot of their media on the internet, and they’re getting very highly targeted gambling adverts”.
“Gambling for me started off as a fun activity, but it was very quickly ruining everything else in my life”.
Gambling harm has become the adopted term surrounding the dangers and downsides of the practice, particularly where an individual has passed the point of taking part for entertainment. For some people, including Ben, these risks were not apparent until some damage was done.
“It affects people from not just a financial standpoint, but it has impacts across mental health and physical health. And it’s not just the person who’s gambling, it has really severe effects on their family, on their friends, on their children, but also society in general.
“Do I think society is better off without gambling? Yeah, I think the harm outweighs the benefit. Gambling for me started off as a fun activity, but it was very quickly ruining everything else in my life”.
It’s never been easier to place a bet than it is right now – you could be a dozen button pushes away from losing thousands of pounds. With such accessibility and its associated risks, it’s no surprise that charities such as Ben’s are trying to raise awareness and combat the issue.
“We need to educate young people, not in a fear-based way, but I think more leaning towards actually helping people critically think and understand the way that the gambling industry operates. The way that they exploit people, and exploit your psychology, to try and make as much money as possible.
“I don’t think we live in a world now where we can completely eradicate exposure, but we can limit it”.
Ben’s right – gambling and its spread won’t stop. It’s an illogical and irrational practice in an illogical and irrational world; they don’t cancel out.
“I’d either win 500 pounds, or I’d get a story to laugh about forever. Looking back, it was pretty stupid”.
Advertising is now embedded in essentially every relevant industry, with 11 out of 20 Premier League football clubs having gambling sponsors emblazoned on their kits this season.
The sheer profits involved makes it clear why it’s now impossible to go about everyday life without seeing any evidence. The country’s gambling regulator, the UK Gambling Commission, posted £16.8 billion in takings for the last financial year. That’s enough to build five Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, or buy Manchester United Football Club three times over, from one year of takings alone.
But there are two sides to that story. The same commission also found around 2.9% of the population have gambled to a point they feel they have suffered in the last year. Whilst almost three percent is statistically a substantial problem in its own right, it also shows that the vast majority of people trying their luck have done so without taking away from other aspects of their life, at least in their own opinion.
Leo Murray is one of the many young adults who class themselves as a “social gambler” – a person who justifies any potential losses by weighing in the “fun” earned by having a flutter.
Leo’s also the person in question who gambled his student loan at the start of this article.
“At the time, I did it because I thought it would be funny regardless, I’d either win 500 pounds, or I’d get a story to laugh about forever. Looking back, it was pretty stupid”.
“Over five years on, I think me and my mates have toned the betting down a bit. We’ve all moved away from each other, but we keep in touch at least every Saturday by putting a group acca (accumulator) on”.
“It doesn’t really win, but it’s usually a good laugh regardless as we take the mick out of those who picked a loser, and it also makes you interested in games of football that you would never have looked at otherwise. It’s fun”.
Just like the acts of drinking and smoking, gambling will always be a constituent of society, whether it’s generally welcomed or not. However, the world needs to catch up to the digital age of betting so we can properly protect and educate young people about a harmful habit that, if left unchecked, can be a detriment to their life before it’s even really begun.
The UK Gambling Commission were approached for comment.
