We talk a lot as a society about how we're living through one of the largest and most consequential social experiments of all-time with social media, which has been proven time and time again to have harmful effects on a user's mental health and interpersonal skills in the short-run. We don't know yet how it will affect people in the long run. We're just waiting to find out.
I think it's time we start viewing sports gambling in the same vein. 45 million Americans are expected to bet on the March Madness NCAA tournament this year, and all it takes is a few minutes of eavesdropping at a university dining hall to show you a significant portion of that 45 million is college-age boys. Sports gambling has become yet another one of the largest and most consequential social experiment of all-time. We know the short-term effect: a bunch of 20-somethings losing $78 because the Cleveland Browns called "heads" on the opening coin flip rather than "tails." But we don't yet know the long-term impact this will have. I don't think we've ever had a generation grow up with gambling this ingrained in their culture at such a young age.
I support everyone's right to lose their money however they please. But the scale the sports betting industry is operating at right now is starting to scare me, and I just hope all these young bettors are seeing it as an ends rather than a means to something worse eventually.
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