Documentary Overview
The documentary, 'Growing up Gambling' is a sensational video with informative content on gambling and how it affects the youth. The video provides this overview through recapping on the life encounters of different college students who have once been addicted to different forms of gambling, and explanations by professionals in gaming and psychology. Gambling has been in existence for many yet, and has only been undergoing dynamic shifts over the years ( PBS, 2015) . Technology has played a significant role in reshaping how gambling is conducted in the modern society. Modern technology has introduced new channels through which gambling is conducted, that is, games through the internet, mobile phones, among other digital devices.
According to statistics conducted on gambling in the United States, more than $866,000 is spent by people playing candy crush to purchase credits for the game. The insane numbers in this case are driven by the gratification of achieving set targets in the game. Based on scientific analysis, the desire to achieve set goals triggers dopamine levels in the brain hence the thrill in going more and more. In testimony to this, one of the students narrates that there is a day when he played a video game and the targets set in the game kept him motivated to continue gaming until it was 5 a.m. in the morning ( PBS, 2015) . On a different occasion, the same student narrates how he shifted from the video gaming to joining a casino where instead of gambling for monetary gains, he played the roulette continuously and only stopped when all his money was lost.
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The professionals in the documentary further explain that the addiction in gaming and gambling has grown intense in the United States among the young people because of the money factor. Most young people especially in college view gambling platforms as places where they could make fortunes. For instance, research data confirmed that more than a third male student athletes are actively involved in sport betting in the hope of making money to finance their youthful lifestyles. The same also happens to adults who are already working and want to make am upgrade in their lifestyles. Although most adults walk physically into casinos to gamble, the youth have also found themselves in casinos, except that for their case, these casinos have been crafted on digital platforms. Most online casinos are not regulated, which makes it more risky for the youth while those that are regulated do not change the outcome regardless: the gamblers still lose their money.
Last, the documentary gives a clear picture of the effects of gambling through the narrations of experiences with sport betting, video gaming, and casinos among the victims. One student explains how gambling and gaming addiction affected his school habits as he began to fall into truancy and low academic performance. The student struggled with fighting the addiction through joining forums for rehabilitation only to fall back into missing school to game and gamble barely days after the rehabilitation. Also, gambling is linked to economic problems and bankruptcy. One of the victims in the documentary narrate how they lost everything in gambling including their job. The victim used to earn approximately $60,000 a year but had nothing left after ten years of gambling ( PBS, 2015) . Similarly, his social life was also caving in after all his friends abandoned him. At the time of documenting the subject, he was living alone and in utter depression.
Personal Reflection
My reflection about gambling and its position within the society is informed by the events in the documentary as well as past research on the subject. Gambling has existed for a long time but has blitz-scaled in the modern technology era. Technology has increased gambling because it has digitalized gambling games that were once exclusive in physical places such as casinos and night clubs. For instance, currently, there exists more than 100,000 online casino platforms running in the US alone and hundreds of thousands across the world (Konietzny, 2017). This dynamic has given more access to casino gambling for people who could not join the casinos initially. For instance, young people under 18 years would find it difficult to get entrance into casinos in the old gambling models. However, these people no longer have restrictions bounding them to age rules for gambling. Online platforms only require them to have an internet connection. Canale et al., (2016) support this school of thought in their research about. The research found out that the minimal regulation and loopholes in regulation has made it easier for young people to join these platforms. However, Zhao et al., (2018) argue that apart from the less regulation, most of the owners of online casinos take advantage of the desire among young people to make money, hence they fail to verify if the people joining these platforms meet the requirements by gambling legal frameworks.
I agree with these sentiments because the modern age especially among young people is highly defined by social media. The social media era has brought a lot of pressure on young people especially on lifestyles. Most people tend to display their happy moments on social media which forms the perception that life should always be on a first lane among the young people. Also, most young people look up to celebrities whose lives are flamboyant. These impressions give the youth the pressure to level up and lead such lifestyles, hence their decisions to look for easy ways to get money such as gambling. Sports betting and other online gambling companies have this information and tend to use it as an opportunity to attract more young people to their sites.
Given their popularity in the modern society, gambling and gaming have affected both the social and economic aspects pertaining to human life, especially among young people. According to Walker and Sobel (2016), most families in the US have sunk into economic crises due to gambling problems from their partners. Gambling addiction is a serious condition that I feel should be addressed as a disorder. People who get bankrupt out of gambling do not necessarily have control over their financial decisions. The dopamine levels and the adrenaline rush triggered by the thought of the reward for stakes taken in the gamble have been proven scientifically to shut down the rationality of an individual. For instance, the individual in the documentary reported that he was filing for bankruptcy for the third time yet still, he could not manage to stop his addiction. Therefore, solutions such as pharmacotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy need to be used to help these people (Nower et al., 2018).
School dropout numbers in the U.S have also been on a steep rise in the recent past. Based on De Luigi et al., (2018) reports, each year there is always a 16.5% increase in the number of college students drop out of their classes every year because if gaming and gambling addictions. My experience with gaming supports these findings. I have witnessed many friends missing their classes and exams out of their addiction for Play Station games such as FIFA, COD, and N2KB. One of my friends, Matthews (pseudo) would stay until late playing FIFA with his friends. They would organize tournaments with attached money prizes of up to $3,000 for the winners of the tournament. Matthews would rather play the whole day for the award and miss out on classes. He ended up not graduating college and further sank into depression and drugs.
Also, poor academic performance has been linked with gaming and gambling. Most gamblers in college miss out on classes and study hours to play their games, which reflects on their performance in class. I feel that this is the most disastrous effect among young people because so many good academic brains are wasted. Students who might have become professionals in future get barred from these destinies by poor grades and low GPAs in school. Grant et al. (2019) also argues that the concentration levels of students addicted to gaming and gambling tends to wane in academic spheres. Therefore, even for those who manage to attend classes, the low levels of concentration affect the outcome in their academic performance.
Social life is another aspect that is affected immensely by gambling. According to Sirola et al. (2019), most gambling addicts tend to end up in solitude due to depression. Social life consequences of gambling addiction are as a result of financial effects. In most cases, the gambling addicts lose their families and friends after their losses of finances, property, or even jobs (Livingstone et al., 2018). I have witnessed a young couple in our neighborhood separating and later divorcing because of the bad gambling habits of the man. The man was addicted to casino games and had at one point gambled their car in a local casino. Although the lady had tried seeking counseling help for her husband, he continued gambling and sunk into so much debt. All these events gradually drifted them apart until they could no longer stay together. As a result, the man is left alone with no money, no friends, or close family members. Churchill and Farrell (2018) assert that such situations are commonly known to trigger substance abuse problems such as alcoholism and the abuse of stimulants. Therefore, other than the depression, the victim ends up entangled in several challenges which sometimes prove difficult to resolve.
In conclusion, gambling is not entirely a bad thing. Gambling has several benefits both to the lives of the people within society as well as the general economic development of a country. Gambling businesses pay taxes and generate revenue to the government. At the same time, these businesses create employment opportunities for many people. There exist also life-changing stories where people who won lotteries or casino bets transformed their lives with the money they got. However, without proper regulation, gambling can be disastrous. Government agencies dealing with regulation of gambling need to adopt methods to track online transactions of gambling firms, as well as their processes. More scrutiny would prevent the problem of having under age individuals registered on these platforms. Also, unregulated firms will be locked out.
References
Canale, N., Griffiths, M. D., Vieno, A., Siciliano, V., & Molinaro, S. (2016). Impact of Internet gambling on problem gambling among adolescents in Italy: Findings from a large-scale nationally representative survey. Computers in Human Behavior , 57 , 99-106.
Churchill, S. A., & Farrell, L. (2018). The impact of gambling on depression: New evidence from England and Scotland. Economic Modelling , 68 , 475-483.
De Luigi, N., Gibertoni, D., Randon, E., & Scorcu, A. E. (2018). Patterns of gambling activities and gambling problems among Italian high school students: Results from a latent class analysis. Journal of gambling studies , 34 (2), 339-359.
Grant, J. E., Lust, K., Christenson, G. A., Redden, S. A., & Chamberlain, S. R. (2019). Gambling and its clinical correlates in university students. International journal of psychiatry in clinical practice , 23 (1), 33-39.
Konietzny, J. (2017). No risk, no fun: implications for positioning of online casinos. International Gambling Studies , 17 (1), 144-159.
Livingstone, C., Adams, P., Cassidy, R., Markham, F., Reith, G., Rintoul, A., ... & Young, M. (2018). On gambling research, social science and the consequences of commercial gambling. International Gambling Studies , 18 (1), 56-68.
Nower, L., Caler, K. R., Pickering, D., & Blaszczynski, A. (2018). Daily fantasy sports players: Gambling, addiction, and mental health problems. Journal of gambling studies , 34 (3), 727-737.
PBS (2015). Growing up gambling, https://www.pbs.org/video/net-nebraska-presents-growing-gambling/
Sirola, A., Kaakinen, M., Savolainen, I., & Oksanen, A. (2019). Loneliness and online gambling-community participation of young social media users. Computers in Human Behavior , 95 , 136-145.
Walker, D. M., & Sobel, R. S. (2016). Social and economic impacts of gambling. Current Addiction Reports , 3 (3), 293-298.
Zhao, Y., Marchica, L., Derevensky, J. L., & Ivoska, W. (2018). Mobile gambling among youth: A warning sign for problem gambling?. Journal of Gambling Issues , 38 .
