The Guardian view on teenage gambling: staking on dopamine Editorial
More than one in 10 children have tried
One issue is the convenience and intimacy of new technology, and the difficulties of regulating it. Another is that users are digital natives, while their parents may not understand – or even know about – these new means. But a third, striking question is the way in which the very nature of gambling, online worlds and the intensity of adolescent experience intersect and may reinforce each other: teenage brains, after all, are reckoned to be more easily influenced by their environments and more prone to risk-taking and impulsivity. Neither teenage cliques nor gaming are new – but peers now exert pressure from afar; and gaming need not stop when your friends go home for tea. The distinction between “always available” and “inescapable” is not obvious, and these worlds can crowd out those spaces where teenagers might once have opened up (to parents who may themselves be busy answering work emails).