It made me think how deeply embedded casual gambling like this is in our society's fabric; a pound on the lottery here, a fiver on the Grand National there. Nothing wrong with it, a harmless flutter and a bit of fun. Like me, you might even win (occasionally). But how harmless is it?
Coming by chance across a survey on adolescent attitudes towards gambling from Tacade's International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University I wonder what messages we are sending our young people. Adolescent gambling is a problem in the UK, it states, and is related to other delinquent behaviours. Studies consistently highlight a figure of up to six per cent of pathological gamblers among adolescent fruit machine gamblers - up to three times higher than that identified in adult populations. Young people are clearly more vulnerable to the negative consequences of gambling than adults.
The main form of problematic gambling among adolescents has been the playing of fruit machines, many of which are legal for them to gamble on. The most recent study (Mori and the International Gaming Research Unit) found that fruit machines were the most popular form of adolescent gambling with 54 per cent of their sample of 8,017 young participants. This also showed that up to 20 per cent are regular fruit machine players, playing at least once a week.
Traditionally youth work hasn't engaged much with this aspect of young people's behaviour or sought to discourage under-age gambling. Which is one reason why The National Youth Agency was happy recently to link up with Tacade to run some sessions for youth workers and so help enable young people to make an informed decision about their own gambling. With another recent survey (Citizens Advice/YouthNet) claiming that nearly half of young people admit they have suffered debt problems, anything that helps them hang on to their hard earned has got to be worth a punt.
- Andy Hopkinson, Media Services project manager at The NYA. He can be contacted at andyh@nya.org.uk.
