At the press of a button, $400 can disappear like it was never there in the first place. Sports betting is an epidemic on the rise, and social media and peer pressure are adding oil to the fire.
Platforms like Draft Kings, Fanduel and Prize Picks are online sportsbooks that allow people to gamble on sports like the NFL, NBA, MLB, college sports, international sports and more.

The most popular types of bets are moneylines, spreads, parlays and props. Moneylines are clear wagers based on who you think will win the game, while spreads are similar but consider the margin of victory. Parlays are combinations of bets, in an “all-or-nothing” format, so if one bet is inaccurate, the whole parlay is lost. Props are bets on aspects of the sport that are not related to the score, such as the statistics of a player or specific events.

Regardless of the type of wager, The National Library of Medicine has concluded that sports betting is growing in popularity and becoming more widespread across adults, but also adolescents despite the legal requirement that a person be 21 years of age in Illinois to place a bet.

With the new age of social media, teenagers are able to see people who have won big sums of money, forgetting that these winning results are often few and far between. This drives them to think that they have a much larger chance of winning big amounts of money betting on sports. In psychology, according to the American Psychological Association, this is called the availability heuristic, where people tend to overestimate how often an event occurs, as examples of it have been frequently presented to them.

Kyle King has been teaching math, in particular AP statistics, for 16 years, with extensive knowledge on probability, risk and statistical thinking.

King has noticed that teenagers in his classes have fallen victim to the availability heuristic in sports betting.

“It’s like the barstool culture. People see social media and they only see people post winning tickets, and so there’s this illusion, obviously false, of people winning a lot. Well, what they don’t see is all the losing tickets,” King said.

Zachary Kuhn, an English teacher, has been at DGS for 22 years. He has taken notice of teenage sports betting and attitudes towards sports betting over these past two decades, and was able to further speak on this psychological phenomenon.

“I think a lot of young men see their friends who do it, and those young men tend to pretend like they’re making a lot of money, and that they won this, and they won that. When, in reality, I just can’t believe there’s anybody who makes money long term in sports betting … because people will win $100, and they will put all $100 back into their next bet,” Kuhn said.

This psychological phenomenon is only one motivator of teenage betting, joining other societal pressures. Illinois State University freshman and former DGS student Aleck Galvez shed light on how sports betting can be part of a social culture, and how those around him have normalized gambling.

“I think sports betting is definitely a big part of college culture; not even just college, I think high school too. I know a lot of people who start in high school, like, most of my friends started my sophomore year. I think I’d say 80% of the guys I know that watch sports bet on them as well,” Galvez said.

This social culture, he went on to say, makes it feel very normalized. This normalization can disguise the fact that sports betting can snowball into addiction.

Sports betting is often classified as an addiction when sports betting crosses from a love for the sport to a love for gambling itself. Senior Luke Westendorf expressed how some people around him show interest in sports betting beyond the regular.

The University of Cambridge reports that gambling activates the same part of the brain that activates in response to food and sexual stimuli, along with “drugs of abuse” as they defined it, like cocaine.

“I do think for some people I know betting is already a problem because they tend to bet on just the most absurd things like ping pong, you know, which nobody watches,” Westendorf said.

Kuhn has witnessed how teenagers do not fully grasp the risks that come with placing wagers on sports.

“They have no clue, and that’s why every time it comes up as a topic I try to point out how much money they are throwing in the hands of the corporate betting overlords. Sports betting is something that can destroy your finances at 17, 27 or 57. I’ve seen a lot of people’s lives ruined by sports betting, and the companies have to do almost no work to make the kids aware of how bad it can get,” Kuhn said.

It appears that this damage starts long before teenagers are crossing the 21-year-old legal threshold, as junior Vincent Junkas points out.

“I know underage people in my grade use apps to bet on sports because they can just lie about their age,” Junkas said.

Beyond fake identification cards and using other people’s government-issued IDs, King explained one way teenagers may be getting around legal age requirements.

“It could be an off-book app or an unregulated one. I know of a couple not US-based apps that maybe just don’t double check IDs like they should,” King said.

The increase in sports betting amongst teenagers can be attributed to this increased access and ability to get around age regulations. Kuhn has seen this change amongst his students over the years.

“There was some sports betting when I first started here that was like, I’ll bet you 20 bucks, and that has always existed, and it’ll never go away; But, technically, you’re supposed to be 21 to get these apps, and somehow, a lot of these young men are getting these apps on their phones—it’s so much easier on the smartphone. You used to have to kind of know somebody who could take your bets, and now you just make them,” Kuhn said.

Many believe that along with education on other addictions, education on the risks of gambling should be integrated into schools.

“Absolutely any kind of behavior that can become addicting should be something that is talked about in health, that’s a required course in Illinois … I think just talking about the fact that these companies make so much money and how difficult it is to actually win is important,” Kuhn said.