Teen Gambling Is Rising and Boys Are Taking the Biggest Hit

Teen Gambling is moving from the margins into the school day. More than one in seven British schoolchildren between thirteen and seventeen has placed a bet at least once, according to new research from the charity Ygam, with boys far more likely to gamble than girls. The findings come from roughly eighteen thousand health and wellbeing assessments gathered between 2023 and 2026 — and they land as gambling-style features such as loot boxes, chance-based rewards and influencer betting promotions become stitched into the games and feeds teenagers use every day.

The split between boys and girls is stark. Twenty-one percent of boys said they had gambled at least once, compared with nine percent of girls, and almost three in a hundred said they gamble monthly or more often — a habit nearly seven times more common in boys. A similar share told researchers gambling had already caused them harm, with boys affected at close to triple the rate for girls. Yet only a small fraction of boys asked for more information about gambling harms, and fewer still asked for help — a pattern seen elsewhere, as young people increasingly take their worries to chatbots instead of professionals.

Schools cannot spot what they are not trained to see, the charity argues. "We need a whole-school and whole-community approach that gives teachers, parents, youth workers, school nurses and other trusted adults the knowledge and confidence to recognise the risks, spot the signs of harm and intervene early," Ygam chief executive Emily Tofield said. The organisation wants gambling-harm prevention woven through safeguarding policies and lessons, rather than delivered as a single talk — and its expanded survey will now track teenagers' exposure to advertising and chance-based mechanics inside games, a call for pre-emptive action in schools.

The problem hiding in plain sight

Broader national data suggests the school survey may understate the scale. A GambleAware state-of-the-nation report published this month cites regulator figures showing three in ten eleven-to-seventeen-year-olds spent their own money on gambling in the past year, a rise on the previous year, while participation in unregulated markets climbed from fifteen to eighteen percent. Around one in three young people said they most often encounter gambling adverts on phones or tablets rather than traditional media, and in 2025 close to a third reported seeing gambling promotions from influencers, according to the report.

The pattern hardens as teenagers grow into young adults. A Nationwide poll of two thousand UK gamblers found more than four in five bettors aged eighteen to twenty-four expect to wager more often in 2026, with a quarter saying they bet to help cover essential bills and nearly one in five saying they feel addicted — around nine times the rate among over-fifty-fives, the poll found. More than three-quarters of that age group said gambling had dented their lives in some way — a generation already reporting record-low happiness. Student surveys paint the same picture: almost half of student gamblers said betting had damaged their university experience, from struggling to afford food to skipping lectures.

What would actually help

There is no consensus on the fix. Ygam is pressing for prevention to be embedded across the curriculum and for its expanded survey to measure exposure to ads, promotions and in-game spending. But some industry watchers argue that squeezing licensed operators simply pushes young players toward offshore sites beyond the reach of domestic law — a drift the latest figures already show. Self-exclusion numbers tell their own story: almost sixty thousand under-twenty-fives have registered with Gamstop, up seventy-five percent in five years. Until support catches up with exposure, the gap keeps widening, and this Teen Gambling data shows how early the pattern starts.

For teenagers, the practical lesson is that the bets that matter are not only the ones placed with bookmakers. Loot boxes, influencer promo codes and "free bet" offers all train the same reflex: stake something, chase the rush, repeat. Learning to spot those moments — and knowing free, confidential help exists before harm sets in, since supportive environments measurably change young people's outcomes — is the Teen Gambling conversation schools are only beginning to have.