Age Is Not a Factor: 1

The United States government has long used studies of gambling youth to support their regulation for online gambling. A survey that was recently released called the National Annenburg Survey of Youth which shows the rates of youthful players at online casinos remains at a very low level. This follows 2007’s ‘precipitous decline’ of users due to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The study was first introduced in 2002 and has since been referenced by many online casino politicians, particularly Spencer Bachus, the Republican Representative who is always outspoken about his beliefs against online casino play.

The most recent report regarding online casino play amongst the youth of the United States was released in late November of 2008. The survey reports that numbers for online casino card games remain low among college and high school aged players. There was a small rise in the percentage of players that play card games at online casinos for money at least once a month but not anything significant. In 2007 the percentage of youth that played once a month was 2.4 percent as opposed to the 3.3 percent in 2008. The players who play more frequently (i.e. weekly), also had little to no change in numbers, 1.1 percent in 2007 to 1.7 percent in 2008. In the early 2000’s there was a big ‘fad’ amongst the 14-24 age range in online casino card games.

The director of the Annenberg Adolescent Risk Communication Institute, Dan Romer, said of the annual online casino survey: “The card playing fad that we saw earlier in the decade appears to have lost its steam among young people ages 14 to 22. In addition, the strong drop in weekly use of Internet sites following passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006 appears to remain in place," This may be due to an increase of gaming options on the internet that do no cost any money, which is something that that age range of people generally lack.