In the most recent edition of the YPGS, 44 young people out of the 3,666 surveyed were considered to be problem gamblers, which is not the same thing as being an “addict” but involves gamblers reporting such symptoms as chasing losses and often thinking about gambling.
How seriously can we take the responses of those 44 people? The gambling expert Dan Waugh recently looked under the bonnet of the last three editions of the survey, which yielded 125 “problem gamblers” out of 10,985 participants and noticed some curious findings.
Most striking were the six kids who claimed to have gambled in every conceivable way in the last week, including visiting casinos, visiting seaside amusement arcades, playing bingo online, playing bingo in a licensed bingo clubs, gambling on machines in a licensed betting shop, betting on e-sports and gambling in an online casino. One of them was only twelve years old.
This seems unlikely, to put it mildly. In total, 31 of the supposed problem gamblers claimed to have gambled in a bricks-and-mortar casino in the past week. While it is not impossible for an older teenager to fool a doorman with a fake ID, most of these kids were aged between 12 and 15. If you take the YPGS seriously, more 12 year olds have gambled in a casino in the last week than 17 year olds. One 13 year old claimed that they did not engage in any gambling activities that are legal for children, such as seaside arcades or having private bets with friends, and only gambled in licensed bookmakers, in online casinos and in actual casinos, all of which he or she had done in the last week.
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