Factors associated with adolescent online and land-based gambling in Canada

Abstract

Background: With the development of new gambling technology, and increased internet accessibility, online gambling has rapidly emerged as a new gambling market. Governments in numerous jurisdictions have moved to legalize online gambling, yet little is known about the impact of online gambling availability particularly for adolescents. To date, few studies have identified the characteristics of adolescent online gamblers and even fewer have looked at whether these characteristics differ from land-based adolescent gamblers. This study examined socio-demographic and factors associated with online gambling for adolescents and compared this to land-based gamblers to examine whether the profile of online gamblers are unique.Method: Data for the current study comes from the 2012–2013 Youth Gambling Survey (YGS) (n = 10 035) and consists of students in Grades 9 to 12 from three Canadian provinces: Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, and Saskatchewan.Results: Compared to adolescents who did not have a gambling problem, those who had low to moderate (OR = 2.21, p < .001) or high problem gambling severity (OR = 13.60, p < .001) were significantly more likely to gamble online. Adolescents who played free games were also significantly more likely to gamble online (OR = 2.75, p < .001). Females were significantly less likely to gamble online compared to males (OR = 0.31, p < .001). Other than gender, problem gambling severity and playing free games, when compared to land-based adolescent gamblers, the profile of online gamblers are not that different.Conclusions: Current prevention efforts for adolescents should focus on gambling across modalities.