How Video Games Are Training Kids to Gamble

0:00 Speaker 1 Like every Sunday with us today is Lynn Shaw and how do we protect our children? The number one consideration in our country in my concern is Lynn. What’s up today?

0:14 Speaker 2 Well, good morning, John. I want to talk about something that is hiding in plane sight in millions of American homes. This new report just came out warning us that boys are being introduced to gambling, not in casinos, but on the couch after school through video games that they’re playing every day. Listen, we just watched the Super Bowl, that

0:35 is the largest single betting day in the United States, and we saw that they were partnering openly with their online gambling sites, their commercials or ads, all of that, and that same gambling culture of betting and taking a chance is bleeding straight into games again, games marketed to kids.

0:53 So according to new research, because we’re always you know, well vetted everything we say in the Warriors, we back up with research from our great colleagues at Common Sense Media. They put out a report that more than one in three boys ages eleven to seventeen say they have gambled in the past year. And this is starting an addiction

1:13 for many. It starts this gambling style. The features are built right in again into their video games, and you may think it’s very harmless. Parents also think, oh, the kids are quiet, you know, they’re in the family room, they’re perhaps in their bedroom, in the kitchen table, they’re playing games. But this harm is pervasive. It is getting

1:32 that brain, that young brain, ready for gambling for a lifetime perhaps of addiction. So there’s a lot of risk going on here, and we have to talk about you know, this exposure inside the video games. We have so much to think about. But you know, what they’re learning with the in the video games. There are things called loop boxes,

1:50 skin cases, gotcha polls where they’re exchanging virtual moneies and also in some of these games, real currency and they’ll receive a random like virtual item they’re buying or character, and it’s kind of like a digital think of it like a digital slot machine built into a video game.

2:07 So what we have to talk about here is even though parents think, well, they don’t recognize it, like we’re talking about, this is actual gambling. It absolutely is, and we already know from our research the algorithms. It is the job of big tech right now. There’s no regulation with big tech as of right now. In twenty twenty six.

2:26 Their job is keeping the eyeballs, keeping everybody online, creating those ads, making money. But I have to you know, kids also, John, they can’t even maybe not even looking for these gambling sites or games, but they’ll pop on to something that plays into the algorithms. We’re always talking about those dangerous algorithms that are feeding kids’ content that

2:47 they shouldn’t see because we know that the adolescents, you know, the brain. This is a very sensitive period and kids are you know, impulsive, and they’re going for the reward and risk. It’s training their brain. And we’re talking about gambling and the risks to their behavior and adult kind of patterns they’re forming now, So we want to talk

3:05 about this is far more popular with boys than girls and families again are even some of the boys are reporting their families are even playing these games with them, and we’re not judging them, but they’re not understanding that they’re setting up their children for a future of addiction.

3:21 So you know, it doesn’t look like traditional betting, but we know is big tech. They just come around with all kinds of new ideas all day long and again to keep that child online. So we want to recommend some practical steps that they’re lynn.

3:35 Speaker 1 See. I worry about our kids, and now you bring up the word gambling. But I’m even worried, even more so with drugs. And we were talking to people the other day and said, look between marijuana, between fetan oil, between cocaine, between heroin. Our country is under attack in many, many ways, and they’re trying to bring our country down.

4:03 And I don’t think a lot of the American people are tiptoeing through the tulips and they don’t realize that.

4:10 Speaker 2 But I see it, You see it, I see it, And it’s our job, our jobs, John, to bring this out, use the platform, which I’m so thankful for, to talk about these issues because again, and I always say it, everybody’s overwhelmed just trying to live, take care of kids, take care of bills, go to jobs, and all of

4:28 this is being done very quickly behind their backs. That is all happening. But how do you change a society. You go after the children, the future adults, the future American leaders. That is why our tagline at the Warriors is there is a war on for our children, because, as you pointed out, John, no matter where you turn,

4:46 there is something going on attacking our children right under our own noses. So I want everybody to wake up. It’s here. We got to deal with it, and we’ve got to be sensible. We’ve got to talk about it.

4:56 Number One, we have to talk to our kids about gambling mechanics, like what it looks like video games and explain to them. We’ve got to Also, all of these sites have parental controls, and yes they make it very difficult to enact them. But most of these gaming also you have to put a credit card on to buy things.

5:13 They require passwords, So adults, we’re not judging here, we’re educating. You don’t leave a credit card on any site for a child to constantly use it and add into their loop box or use it to buy more gaming and passwords right. Understand if your child’s on a game, create the password with the child and do everything together, and

5:33 also understand what they’re playing. Didn’t watch with your child. I’m even talking to teenagers, which can be a little more difficult, but they want us to be part of their lives. They want us to sitn’t play these games with them, so sitn’t do it and understand what they’re exposed to. But also limit time John.

5:48 Speaker 1 Spent on games. We’re at a time. Give us your website again.

5:52 Speaker 2 Absolutely, Lynswarriors dot org org. Everybody wake up, protect our children because there is a war on for our kids in a Marria that I.

6:01 Speaker 1 Agree with you one hundred ten percent. Thank you for what you’re doing, and God bless you, God bless America. Thanks John,