From Business Insider, April 16:
If you want to gamble in America these days, you have more ways to put your money on the line than ever. You've got the real-life casino, the casino on your phone, sports betting, crypto, meme stocks — even complex financial products like zero-day options can give you a quick hit of risk. For young men in particular, it's an enticing, if a bit troubling, prospect. But for a variety of companies, from sportsbooks to investing apps, an increased willingness to make some kind of gamble means business is booming. The boys-who-like-to-bet bank is open, and companies are making as many withdrawals as they can.
The level at which gambling has become normalized in the United States in recent years is stunning. Americans legally bet a record $119.84 billion on sports in 2023, up from $93 billion in 2022. Since the Supreme Court in 2018 struck down a federal law prohibiting sports gambling, more than three dozen states have embraced it in some form. Seven states have also legalized iGaming, meaning online blackjack, roulette, and slot machines.
And while not explicitly gambling, free trading apps such as Robinhood have gotten an increasing number of ordinary people into investing — for fun, to alleviate boredom, to try to make some extra cash. While many people have used the apps to build a stable portfolio, a good chunk of people are doing high-risk day trading or piling into meme stocks like GameStop, AMC, or, as Donald Trump's people are hoping, his newly public social-media company. Crypto is back again, and this time around, almost nobody is pretending the endeavor is about anything other than "number go up." Many video games have a gambling-like aspect, too, that gets kids and adolescents into the risk-minded pipeline.
While plenty of people across demographics are participating in these trends, data suggests the crowds skew younger and male. A 2023 survey from the NCAA found that sports gambling was prevalent among young adults, specifically on college campuses and among Black and Latino respondents. Pew Research found in 2022 that men and people under 50 were likelier to bet on sports than women and the over-50 crowd. Younger men tend to be more into crypto and meme-stock trading as well.
This isn't surprising. Men tend to take more financial risks than women. As investors, they're more prone to overconfidence, which often leads them to trade more — and, as a result, get lower returns. Men generally gamble more than women, and they've been found to have lower levels of impulsive coping in gambling settings....
....MUCH MORE
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