Hooked young

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Up next on The World and Everything in It: Putting the odds back in children’s favor.

Thanks to the internet, what happens in Vegas no longer just stays in Vegas. Slot machines, bingo, roulette, and other games of chance all enjoy easy entry into homes.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Now most states ban gambling for people under 18, but illegal betting sites often find ways around laws—and those young people are often the biggest losers.

WORLD’s Lauren Smyth has the story.

LAUREN SMYTH: Kurt Freudenberg knew he had an addiction by age 12. He hid it so well that his mother, Kim, didn’t see the signs until he left for college. She’d check his location and realized he almost never left his room.

KIM FREUDENBERG: He was not showering, not brushing his teeth, washing clothes, hardly eating, peeing in a plastic tub in his dorm room so he didn’t have to leave the computer.

Kurt’s grades slipped and he dropped out. When he got home, his parents sat him down.

FREUDENBERG: We kind of just waited him out, like looked at him, kept quiet, waited for him to ’fess up, thinking he was going to say it was drugs. And he just said, “I’m gambling.”

Kurt had been a gamer in middle school. His parents knew he spent real money on in-game items, like costumes and special weapons for his character...

SOUND: CSGO trailer music

What they didn’t know was that he’d trade those items for tokens on illegal offshore gambling sites.

FREUDENBERG: And he was a normal kid—like he ran track, he played soccer, he had good grades, he, you know, was a good student. And then he went to college, where he then started getting into crypto casinos, sports betting, all kinds of betting.

Kurt isn’t alone. A 2025 study from the UK found nearly a third of kids under 18 spent money on gambling within the past year. Most of it seems harmless—bets between family members, casual card games, or claw machines at the arcade. But about 2% showed early signs of a gambling problem. And some had already lost control.

Cait Huble is director of public affairs at the National Center for Problem Gambling. She says more and more children have started calling the help hotline.

CAIT HUBLE: They have access to a mobile phone, they are very tech literate, and they have been playing video games with Minecraft and loot boxes their whole life.

Minecraft is an online world-building game marketed for kids ages ten and up. Some experts worry the in-game treasure chests, which drop random digital items, are early exposure to gambling mechanics. And kids who start betting young are almost twice as likely as their peers to develop an addiction later in life. The digital nature of the currency doesn’t help.

HUBLE: The comprehension of, we're playing video games, or, you know, we're playing with pretend money. And I turn 18 or 21, and it's real money, but it's still all you know, digital. We're not playing with cash and chips the same way 20 years ago, and that mental shift, I think, is hard for a lot of those young, mushy brains to comprehend.

Some European countries and the state of New York have taken legal action to prevent kids from accessing games with loot boxes that drop random items and can be purchased with real money, saying they violate local gambling laws.

But simply restricting gambling mechanics in video games won’t stop kids from being exposed. Now, you don’t even have to go to a casino—the casino will come to you.

AUDIO: The crowd is psyched … for Monday night!

There’s football on TV. The odds appear at the bottom of the screen, and ads for betting sites play during commercial breaks. A decade ago, only Nevada had fully legal sports betting. Then in 2018, the Supreme Court ruled the federal government couldn’t stop other states from legalizing it. 

Thirty-nine states plus Washington DC opened sports betting markets—and with that change came lots of new marketing.

In theory, gambling sites have access restrictions for children under 18. But those restrictions can open the door to black market sites. Sometimes, the odds may be rigged—let the kid win a little to keep him coming back. 

Here’s Kim Freudenberg again:

FREUDENBERG: They think that gambling is a way to make money, not understanding at all about how the product is designed for you to lose, and it’s designed for you to lose as much as possible, as fast as possible, right? Because that’s the system of the slot machine—near misses, losses disguised as wins, right? This is all psychological things to keep you playing.

In the depths of his addiction, her son Kurt stole from his family and sold his belongings to fund bets. But for many gamblers, losses go far beyond just money.

FREUDENBERG: One in five problem gamblers, at some point, will attempt to take their life, because they get so it’s so hidden, and it can get so bad before people notice.

Even after Kim found out, she didn’t know how to help her son. The lack of resources eventually drove her to start her own nonprofit.

For Kurt, she cobbled together resources: first sending him to a therapist. He recovered, relapsed, and dropped out of college again. Then he spent a month in inpatient therapy. He’s been clean for three years. He’s back in college, and this time, he’s thriving.

It's a happy ending for one story—but Kim says the trap that snared her son can still endanger other kids.

FREUDENBERG: It’s so dangerous, and like, most people just don’t see it coming. And we’re just not ready for what’s going to happen.

For WORLD, I’m Lauren Smyth.

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