Center for Gambling Studies

"It's unlikely we will see the full effect of this rush to legalization for several years." Part of the reason is that addiction to gambling is quieter than addiction to drugs or alcohol. "Gambling addiction has no tell," Nower says. "You can be gambling away your house on your mobile phone sitting at the dinner table, and not a single person will know until the devastation of your whole family is complete."

“By mentioning TikTok, they’re basically saying, ‘We’re pitching this to really young people,’” says Lia Nower, the director for the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University. “What we know is that the younger people start gambling, the more likely they are to develop a problem down the road.”

“With gambling, you can hide it. That was something early on that was really stunning to me,” Lia Nower, director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University, said. “With online gambling, that’s true one thousand-fold. You can hide it until they come for your house, your car, and you have devastated your family financially.”

The study examined the degree to which perceptions of familial and household participation in gambling and other addictive behaviors in youth was associated with frequency and problem severity of gambling, alcohol and/or drug use in participants as adults.

Featured in Newsweek, the article discusses cryptocurrency trading and the risk of developing an addiction. 

“Sports betting is really appealing to a younger demographic, to kids, to teens,” she says. The same is true of in-play betting—again made all-too-easy by smartphones—which is more associated with problem gambling. “The younger ones are much more likely to gamble in-game, which is more dangerous because you don’t have that cool head,” Nower adds.