The addiction to betting and online games in adolescents, a phenomenon that was ignited by the pandemic, today reveals its worst face in young Argentines: specialists warn of an “explosion of cases” in boys, especially between 13 and 19 years old, who come to clinics and help groups desperate “because of their problem gambling.” Some of them tormented by large debts that drag them to even put their own lives at risk. Meanwhile, the legislation does not put a stop to the advertising bombardment on television shows, soccer games and influencers on social networks that seduce teenagers with the promise of easy money in the midst of the economic crisis.
The context seems to have the necessary ingredients for the perfect storm: a high consumption of social networks and streaming channels, the possibility of getting into debt with a click through virtual wallets and the proliferation of “gurus” with formulas to earn thousands of dollars per month. month, which are nothing more than models based on scams. By law, minors under 18 years of age cannot participate in betting. However, through the credit card data of their relatives or through adult intermediaries who offer their data in exchange for a commission, the online casino landed in the hands of teenagers.
“What starts as a game ends in something as serious as gambling addiction. This is not a vice as we have been taught, it is a disease and it causes destruction because it destroys the health and family economy and can leave you under a bridge in two seconds,” says Lucía, Santiago’s mother (both names are fictitious to protect their identity). Last December, at the age of 14, the young man tried to take his own life after spending all the dollars saved by his family on bets. “I am very hurt by what I did. “This is because of my gambling addiction, because of my gambling addiction,” he had said goodbye in a letter moments before ingesting a bottle of opiate that he bought through social networks.
In August, four months before the episode, he had started playing in virtual casinos: blackjack at first, roulette and slot machines later. Santiago only had the meager monthly payment that his mother transferred to a virtual wallet. However, when the money was not enough, he began to steal the savings they kept in the house. What followed was a chain of negligence: an exchange house that received dollars from a minor, a merchant who agreed to deposit that money into a virtual wallet in exchange for a commission, and online casinos that do not rigorously verify age. of the players.
“My son did not get into debt or steal from other people, as happens to many, because he first decided to stop existing. He himself told me in his farewell letter, for him (that decision) was another gamble, playing for the last time: either it turned out well, which for him meant dying, or it turned out badly. The logic of chance, winning or losing, but now betting on his life,” says the young man’s mother, who is currently undergoing his recovery with the civil association Gamblers Anonymous. Due to the “rain of cases” that this organization has received since last year, three months ago they decided to allow the entry of players under 18 years of age with gambling problems. At the same time, they work with Juganon, a support group for family members of players.
“It is very complex, there are many signs (of addiction) that are camouflaged with what is typical of adolescence and, until something terrible happens, in many cases we parents do not realize it,” laments Lucía. “I think that no one realizes the seriousness of what is happening with the boys and that this is just beginning. We must be aware that the irresponsible way in which they are openly promoting gambling can trigger an illness,” warns the mother.
The uncontrollable impulse to bet or chance through different digital platforms is called digital gambling or cybergambling. There are all types: casino machines, sports betting and lottery are some of the most popular. According to the report “Global Online Gambling Markets – Forecasts from 2022 to 2027”, the global online gambling market exceeded $65.3 billion in 2020 and its annual growth rate is projected to grow by 10 percent by 2027. which would escalate to almost 130 billion dollars that year.
Given the lack of measurements, it is difficult to know exactly the number of players in Argentina and particularly those under 18 years of age. However, the first clues appeared in schools: kids who stopped paying attention in class and were excessively focused on their cell phones, who lowered their school performance and fell asleep or even began to miss class.
In a public high school in Temperley, south of the Buenos Aires suburbs, a student desperately asks his teacher for money to continue betting in the middle of class, while his classmates warn him that he should calm down. At a technical school in La Matanza, a teenager bets and gets frustrated because of what he loses: “When we spoke with him he told us that in his own family they gambled a lot and lost a lot of money. He knew that this would end badly but he still couldn’t stop doing it,” says his teacher. At a private rugby club in La Plata, the money raised for a sports tour appeared and disappeared every day: it rotated from bet to bet in the teenagers’ accounts.
“What we are seeing today is truly unprecedented, we have never seen it before,” says Débora Blanca, a psychologist specialized in gambling addiction who has been working on this problem for two decades. “During all this time we found other types of gamblers, who are those who gamble in person, who go to the casino, to bingo, they spend all night in front of the slot machine, with all the complexities that gambling addiction brings as it is an addiction. But here something is added that makes it more complex, which is that they are boys and that they also bet from their cell phones, which becomes a casino in their hand and the way through which invitations to play constantly arrive,” she explains.
If in face-to-face gambling it takes between five and eight years to develop, according to specialists, in online gambling players can become compulsively hooked in two or one years, and even in months. In general, teenagers start with sports betting, which seems to be not about chance but about knowledge of the sport. Some families, although aware that their children gamble, “do not see it as something problematic and that is the main issue, if we naturalize it it is very complicated,” warns the psychologist.
“The bottom line is to think about what world the kids are finding themselves in, what happens with hope for the future, for projects for them in such a difficult context,” he reflects. In the midst of the economic crisis that the country is going through, young people represent the population group most affected by employment problems. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC), in the third quarter of 2022 The unemployment rate in young people between 18 and 24 years old reached 21.2%, a figure three times higher than the population average. In turn, informality rose to 68.3% in that age range.
![Santiago and his mother Lucía hug each other in Plaza 1 de Mayo in Buenos Aires, on May 18, 2024.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/2B27FIDV65H3NHP4WKKI7PGI6Y.jpg?auth=d2604d9a792f5baf8918962c98d6933d65913c3404cc09df85b36b440d7be560&width=414)
“It is a climate of time that supports the idea of meritocracy and quick and easy money. We constantly see courses that invite you to learn how to make money in a short time, that work from neuromarketing to influence those who consume these advertisements, convincing them that this can indeed be the case,” warns Soledad Fuster, psychologist and trainer in grooming and other problems of violence. digital in schools across the country. “Losing track of the figures, especially because in virtuality the materiality of money is blurred, the children began to go into debt with such high figures that we are finding out about situations in which they receive threats that they are going to cut off a finger or killing someone in their family or even families having to sell properties for debts,” he says.
Juan Pablo, who prefers not to reveal his last name, turns on the zoom and introduces himself: “I am a compulsive gambler in the process of recovery.” He is 22 years old, but when it all started he was barely 19. He came to online betting from the content of streamers that he followed during the pandemic. “At first I just watched, then I started betting tiny amounts and over time one became bigger than the other, to a point where neither the bet nor the profit was enough. I needed to stay and continue, if I didn’t have money I would get it from wherever and however,” he says.
Once hooked, the spiral repeats itself in the vast majority of kids: increasingly immersed, they are unable to enjoy anything that is not related to the game. “It’s living for the game,” he says. “The last time I couldn’t sleep, it was a constant persecution because I was thinking about the game, about what I owe, about so many lies that I told that I didn’t even know what to answer to each person I had lied to for money.” During that time, he opened more than 35 different email accounts to access online games and dozens of other user profiles on gaming platforms and different virtual wallets, which he closed a few months ago when he began his recovery, along with giving up the control of your bank accounts and your cell phone.
“Everything was uncovered due to a large debt that I generated in my family due to gambling,” the young man acknowledges. “When I left him I felt empty. It’s something I’m still trying to fill: I went back to work to pay off the debt, to play sports and see friends. I never had any type of excess in my life, but when the game came I transformed into a person who today I look back on and don’t even remotely want to think about going back to what I was, because I was completely lost, I didn’t know where I was going to go. to stop.”
So far, Argentine legislation does not prohibit betting and chance applications from targeting young audiences with aggressive campaigns that appear everywhere: advertisements, voiceovers, pop-ups and t-shirts from the main football clubs, including the Football Association. Argentine (AFA). The first step in the opposite direction was taken by Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield by eliminating a betting house as a sponsor of the institution this year.
In recent months, legislators from different political forces presented bills to strengthen regulation and restrict the access of children and adolescents to virtual casinos and betting houses. “We need prevention campaigns so that families are warned and have tools to care for their children, as well as give children self-care guidelines,” warns Foster. While the Argentine State increasingly withdraws from different social areas, specialists warn of the urgency of “protecting children from these illegal practices whose risk and magnitude we have not yet assessed.”
#crisis #aggravates #gambling #addiction #Argentine #adolescents #betting #life