A study published today in the peer-reviewed scientific journal JAMA Internal Medicine reported a 23% jump in people searching for the phrase: "Am I addicted to gambling?", which may suggest that problem gambling is on the rise.
The authors tallied 6.5 to 7.3 million searches for problem gambling help nationally from 2016 to 2024 with a monthly high of 180,000 monthly searches via Google. The authors didn't count searches on other search engines like Bing and Yahoo.
Meanwhile, sports wagering skyrocketed from $4.9 billion in 2017 to $121.1 billion in 2023. And most of those bets were placed on mobile apps or other online sites. The study authors found that 94% of US sports bets in 2023 were placed online.
The study’s senior author John W. Ayers, Ph.D., who is vice chief of innovation in the Division of Infectious Disease and Global Public Health, deputy director of informatics at UC San Diego Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute (ACTRI), and Qualcomm Institute scientist says, “Now, sportsbooks have expanded from a single state to 38 states, with hundreds of billions of wagers, mostly online, coinciding with record-breaking demand for help with gambling addiction as millions seek help.”
His colleague Davey Smith, M.D., professor of medicine and director of ACTRI adds that, "Many people struggling with addiction don’t openly discuss it, but they do turn to the internet for answers.” He also noted, “By analyzing search trends, we can gain real-time insight into the true scale of gambling addiction in the U.S.”
Hmm. Maybe.
Searching for a problem gambling quiz - like the one we offer on BetBreak.org doesn't necessarily mean that you meet the diagnostic criteria for a gambling problem. It does mean, however, that many people are concerned enough about their gambling to get more info and that's a good thing.
Still, by state, the opening of sportsbooks consistently corresponded with increased internet searches related to problem gambling. Illinois (35%), Massachusetts (47%), Michigan (37%), New Jersey (34%), New York (37%), Ohio (67%), Pennsylvania (50%) and Virginia (30%) all experienced significant increases in gambling addiction-related searches following the launch of sportsbooks in their state.
“The significantly higher search volumes observed in all eight states make it virtually impossible that our findings occurred by chance,” said Atharva Yeola, a student researcher in the UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute. “Statistically speaking, the probability of these results happening randomly is less than one in 25.6 billion.”
