Sports betting is causing two public health crises for men
Ahead of Monday’s NCAA men’s basketball final, much of the news coverage focused on two overlapping dynamics: what bets to make, and how the rise of sports betting is causing damage.
According to Isaac Rose-Berman, a fellow at the American Institute for Boys and Men, the skyrocketing popularity of sports betting is a burgeoning public health crisis, especially for young men.
“Young men are generally wired to kind of engage in more risky behavior,” he said on this episode of the “First Opinion Podcast.” Furthermore, “they just really like sports a lot more. And so the sports betting aspect in particular sort of really skews towards young men, both because they like sports and because it kind of gets at their ego.” While men and women are roughly equally represented at the casino, with “sports betting you’re talking, you know, 85% to 90% of the users” are men, according to Isaac.
That leads to two problems from a public health perspective: the financial cost, which can lead to depression, anxiety, and even suicide, and the compulsive behavior that pulls people out of their normal lives.
“The system that we have set up right now is not really designed to protect people, especially when the mandate both explicitly and implicitly in a lot of states for regulators is to maximize revenue, not necessarily to protect their citizens,” Isaac said.
You can read Isaac’s recent First Opinion essay here. We also discussed McKay Coppins’ recent viral cover story for The Atlantic on sports betting and a piece in Defector written by an anonymous person who used to work for sports gambling apps.
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