42.7% of Americans aged 13 to 17 gambled in some form over the past year, and roughly 11% of the teenagers who gambled were classified as high risk for problem gambling. Those figures come from a new study by the Center for Gambling Studies at the Rutgers School of Social Work, led by the center’s director, Lia Nower. For anyone searching for teen gambling statistics in New Jersey, this is the research being referenced, and it reframes a problem most adults assume is handled by an age gate on a betting app.
It isn’t. The most useful thing in the Rutgers data is not the headline prevalence number. It’s the collision between two prevention approaches that both sound sensible, only one of which the findings actually support.
What the Rutgers team measured
Researchers at the Center for Gambling Studies surveyed 1,677 Americans aged 13 to 27, then reported results separately for the adolescent sub-group of 13 to 17 year olds. Across the full 13-to-27 sample, 52.5% said they had gambled in the past year. One clarification worth making early: Rutgers is a New Jersey institution and the work is widely covered as a New Jersey story, but the published figures describe Americans in that age band, not a New Jersey-only sample. New Jersey adults shouldn’t read it as a local snapshot, and they shouldn’t read it as somebody else’s problem either.
The figures that carry the most weight
The prevalence numbers set the scale. The relational numbers explain the mechanism.
| Finding | Figure | Group |
|---|---|---|
| Gambled in the past year | 42.7% | Ages 13-17 |
| Gambled at least weekly | 18.9% | Ages 13-17 |
| Gambled in the past year | 52.5% | Ages 13-27 |
| High risk for problem gambling, among gamblers | 10.7% female / 9.9% male | Survey sample |
| Had a family member who gambled | 75.5% | High-risk gamblers aged 13-17 |
| Had gambled with a family member | 61.2% | High-risk gamblers aged 13-17 |
| Believed a family member had a gambling problem | 66.3% | High-risk gamblers aged 13-17 |
The study also found that risk is not concentrated in boys, which contradicts a long-standing assumption in prevention work. Among gamblers, high-risk rates were 10.7% for females and 9.9% for males. Differences by race, ethnicity and income were more pronounced: Black respondents reported the highest past-year participation at 63.9%, and among those who gambled, 17.7% of Black respondents and 12.8% of Hispanic respondents were classified high risk, against 6.4% of white respondents. Nearly 30% of gamblers from households earning under $10,000 a year were high risk, as were 22.8% of those from households earning $10,000 to under $20,000.
Why the same behavior does more damage at 15 than at 35
Adolescents are more susceptible to gambling harm because the brain systems that respond to reward mature earlier than the systems that weigh consequences. Research on adolescent brain development, as summarized by public health bodies including the National Institute of Mental Health, describes the prefrontal cortex continuing to develop into the mid-twenties while reward sensitivity peaks earlier. The practical result is a period of years in which a teenager can feel the pull of a near-miss strongly and discount the arithmetic behind it.
Normalization does the rest. Betting odds are read aloud during broadcasts, parlays circulate in group chats, and fantasy contests sit beside gambling products in the same phone. A teenager does not have to break a rule to absorb the idea that wagering is simply part of following sport.
Where the access actually comes from
“We are living in a time where anyone can have a casino or sports book in their pocket,” Nower said in a statement accompanying the study. “Now teens who should be playing sports are betting on them, often with family members.”
That second sentence matters more than the first. Licensed sportsbook apps require identity verification and block registrations below the legal gambling age in that state, which is 21 in most states but 18 in some, so underage access through them generally runs on a borrowed credential: a parent’s logged-in app, an older sibling’s account, a shared card. Meanwhile, the 13-to-17 group in the Rutgers survey was more likely to report bingo, raffles and games of skill than the headline products, which means a large share of adolescent gambling happens in settings no app store control reaches.
The realistic routes look like this:
- Accounts belonging to a parent, older sibling or friend over the legal age
- Informal peer-to-peer betting on games, cards, dice and fantasy pools, settled by payment app
- Family and community gambling, including raffles, bingo and betting alongside relatives
- Gambling-like mechanics inside video games, such as loot boxes and skin wagering on third-party sites, which sit outside most gambling regulation
- Adjacent speculative activity: the broader 13-to-27 sample reported 20.7% participation in sports betting, 18.4% in season-long fantasy, 14% in cryptocurrency trading, 12.9% in high-risk stock trading, 8.5% in social casino games and 6.6% in prediction markets
Two of those adjacent categories produced the study’s most striking risk concentrations: roughly 40% of prediction market participants and 41% of social casino players were classified high risk for problem gambling. Neither product is universally regulated as gambling.
Red flags worth noticing
Warning signs tend to show up in money and mood before they show up in anything a teenager says. Watch for:
- Secrecy about where money went, or cash appearing and disappearing without explanation
- Borrowing from siblings, friends or a parent’s wallet, and small repeated requests for funds
- Payment app transfers to peers that don’t match any purchase
- Mood that tracks the sports calendar, with irritability clustered around game results
- Long sessions on phones late at night, or sudden defensiveness about screen checks
- Missing possessions, sold game items or skins, or interest in trading sites
- Falling grades, withdrawal from teams or hobbies, and a narrowing circle of friends
Restriction or literacy: which prevention bet the data supports
Both approaches are defensible. The restriction case is straightforward: harden age verification on betting platforms, bring prediction markets and social casino products under gambling safeguards, limit advertising exposure, and use device and app-store parental controls to close the obvious doors. The Rutgers researchers themselves called for stronger oversight of gambling-like products and a federal regulatory agency setting national minimum standards, including national self-exclusion.
The literacy case is that controls do not reach the setting where most adolescent gambling in this survey appears to happen. When 61.2% of high-risk 13-to-17 year olds have gambled with a family member and 66.3% think a relative has a gambling problem, blocking an app does not touch the exposure. Neither does a stricter ID check on a product the teenager was never going to register for directly.
My read is that household culture and education do more work than controls for this specific age group, and that restriction is still worth pursuing because it targets what controls can actually reach: the products with 40%-plus high-risk rates that currently sit outside the rules. Restriction is a policy instrument with a slow fuse. A conversation at home is available tonight.
What parents can do
- Talk about the math rather than the morality. Explain house edge plainly: a game with a 96% return to player keeps 4% of everything wagered over the long run, which is how the operator profits regardless of any single result. Walking through how improbable headline payouts really are is more persuasive than a prohibition, and so is showing how progressive jackpots accumulate and why those wins are rare outliers.
- Audit your own account hygiene. Log out of betting apps, remove saved cards, and use device passcodes a teenager does not know.
- Use parental controls at the operating system and app-store level, including purchase approval for in-game spending.
- Review statements and payment app history periodically, and ask about transfers that don’t match a purchase.
- Model what you want copied. Teens in high-risk categories overwhelmingly had a gambling family member; betting in front of a 14 year old, or with one, is the most powerful signal in the house.
What schools and policymakers are being asked to do
The Rutgers team recommended that prevention education begin in middle school, with evidence-based material for teachers, students, parents and counselors. In practice that means curriculum that teaches probability and the structure of gambling products rather than scare messaging, plus counselor training so a referral pathway exists when a student discloses a problem. On the policy side, the proposals on the table are stronger oversight of prediction markets, social casino games and similar gambling-like products, tighter age-verification enforcement, and a federal agency setting national minimum standards including self-exclusion. Advertising volume is part of the same conversation, though it is the hardest piece to move.
Where to get help
Call or text 1-800-MY-RESET, the National Council on Problem Gambling’s National Problem Gambling Helpline, formerly known as 1-800-GAMBLER. It runs 24/7, is free and confidential, and routes callers to local services. In New Jersey, the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey operates support and referral services and is the organization behind the helpline previously reached on 800-GAMBLER. For a student, a school counselor or a pediatrician is a reasonable first contact and can make a referral. Editors should confirm current numbers and service hours with each organization before publication.
What the study does not settle is the boundary question. If roughly 40% of young prediction market users and 41% of social casino players screen as high risk, the sharpest end of the problem is sitting in products that most adults would not describe as gambling at all, and that many jurisdictions do not regulate as gambling. Until that category is defined, parents are being asked to police something the rulebook has not yet named.