Online Gambling Up Among College Age Men
A recent survey has found that college age men are gambling more than ever before online.
The survey was conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and it revealed that 16 percent of college age males gambled online in 2010 compared to 4.4 percent in 2008.
400,000 males in college ranging from age 18 to 22 gambled at least once a week on the Internet, and there were over 1.7 million who gambled at least once a month.
The survey reveals what industry analysts have said all along: The Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act of 2006 has done nothing to stymie online gambling activity.
Online poker in particular can be a fast means of generating income for money-starved college students.
Kash Eurkus, a student here at the University of Massachusetts, told The Daily Collegian that he made an amazing $400 playing poker online in a matter of hours. Eurkus comes from what he describes as a lower middle class family.
“I would always hear how we are in debt or don’t have money for certain things because my parents had to put three kids through college, so I wanted to try to help out my family by trying to make money online, and this was only at 16,” he explained.
Of course most online poker sites would not allow individuals under the age of 18 to play for real cash. Eurkus started on the “free play” sites.
Since March, he said he has made over $11,000, while most of his fellow college students continue to borrow cash from their parents, charge up credit cards or dig into their student loans.
Sometimes school work gets in the way of online poker however.
“I try not to let gambling affect my life too much, but it definitely does, because tournaments online can take up to eight hours if you make it far, which makes it hard to do school work,” he elaborated.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center released its findings late last month and included some other startling numbers. There was also a rise in overall online monthly gambling among high school-aged females, from 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent, according to the latest National Annenberg Survey of Youth.
Among high school-aged males, the monthly use of online gambling sites increased from 2.7 percent to 6.2 percent, a change that was not statistically significant.
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
