Gambling

Increasingly, addressing gambling related harm is being considered a public health issue and the Gambling Act 2005 specifically singles out children as a vulnerable group who should be protected from being harmed or exploited by gambling. Young people in the UK are growing up with ready access to online environments and because a lot of gambling activity occurs online, they may be more easily targeted. Most gambling is legal from age 18. The National Lottery and football pools have a minimum age of 16 years, and low stakes gambling machines (such as fruit machines) can be played at any age. Informal private gambling (such as between friends) is unregulated.

Rates of problem gambling across 10-24 year vary by survey.  Different surveys use different questions and scales.  Data on gambling among 11-16 year olds are provided by regular Ipsos Mori surveys undertaken for the Gambling Commission (Gambling Commission, 2020).  Drawing on a representative sample of approximately 3,000 young people in England, Scotland and Wales, this survey has been administered since 2011.  A third (37%) of this age group had spent their own money on gambling in the last year, with 9% gambling in the last week.  This included making private bets, buying scratch cards, playing fruit/slot machines and playing cards.  Note that these data predate the Covid-19 lockdowns.

Data on gambling in 16-24 year olds are provided by the Health Survey for England.  In the 2018 survey, 39% of this age group had engaged in some kind of gambling activity over the last 12 months, the majority of which was National Lottery draws.  A smaller proportion (11%) had engaged in online gambling.  These rates are slightly lower than previous years. According to a standard problem gambling scale, 0.8% of the age group were classified as meeting the DSM-IV criteria for problem gambling (NHS Digital, 2019b).

All data correct as of 1st November 2021