This KATV report caught my eye: The Arkansas Problem Gambling Council has seen a 22% increase in calls for help this year. I have a feeling we’re going to see a lot more trouble on this front with the advent of sports gambling on phone apps, which was legalized in Arkansas in March 2022.
“Right now, we carry little casinos in our pocket and that’s our phones,” Vena Schexnayder of the APGC told the TV station.
Of course, the calls to gambling problem hotlines are a tiny fraction of the issue. The worst cases probably aren’t seeking reform. There is something unsettlingly grim about the perfunctory listing of the hotlines that come at the tail end of sports gambling commercials, read at hyperspeed so they can get through every state.
“A lot of times, I also see folks that say they had their kid’s college money saved and looked into that account that shouldn’t have been touched, until the kids graduating and found that there was nothing left in it,” Schexnayder said.
I have mixed feelings about this stuff. With something so ubiquitous, it’s surely better to have it out in the open than driven underground. I mostly think people should be free do activities they think are fun, even if it’s stupid or harmful. I enjoy making sports bets from time to time, and of course it was an Arkansas tradition at the racetrack long before the apps appeared.
But. The massive profits the casinos are raking in aren’t generated by people like me. They are dependent on very heavy users, who are most profitable if they are suffering from addiction, and ruining their lives, and inevitably their families’ lives, too. The house always wins. The ease of smartphones shatters any boundaries on such addictive behaviors, preying on biological impulses ill-suited for modern dangers.
Professional sports leagues are completely bought in at this point (and the inevitable scandals are trickling in; there will be many more). Their broadcasts and publishing are increasingly as much about gambling as the competition itself. The Pete Rose scandal of my childhood almost seems quaint.
There’s a lot of discussion about the impacts of smartphones and social media on mental health, particularly for young people. I’ve seen less focus on sports gambling in particular, but it’s coming. I guess AI is a sexier topic, but to my mind this is a clearer example of unleashing a technological change on society without fully thinking through the material harms that are baked into the business model.
