As human beings, we are constantly in search of sources of dopamine. For those unfamiliar with that word, Dopamine is a hormone and a type of neurotransmitter, or chemical messenger, made in your brain, it plays a crucial role in how we experience pleasure and rewards (via WebMD). We all have different ways of getting our daily dose of said chemical. However, I would like to focus on the sources of dopamine for adolescents and younger adults.
When you’re young, there are many ways to satisfy your craving for dopamine, such as spending time with friends, playing sports, or reading. But today, I would like to emphasize the cheapest and most accessible way: scrolling through social media. It is no secret that phones are essentially extensions of ourselves. We carry it everywhere; it feels weird leaving the house without it. While on social media, we are constantly exposed to digital marketing.
The real danger comes from when we mix the fact that young people are constantly consuming digital marketing with another source of harmful dopamine: gambling. In this post, we are going to focus on a couple of detrimental digital marking practices which could explain the boom in youth gambling and the pros and cons of loto-Québec.
The Influence of Digital Marketing on Youth Gambling
According to Statistics Canada, approximately 48% of Canadians in between the ages of 15-25 have gambled in the past year. The total population of said age group is 4,544,435 so roughly 2,181,328 young Canadians have gambled in 2018. Furthermore, according to a yale Study, 1% of people become addicted. Which can be worrisome. I could not find any surveys done in recent years. However, from 2018-2022, there has been an 8% increase in online gambling which is attributed to young gamblers (Casino.ca).
To understand how this increase occurred, we need to go back to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the lockdown, no one could leave their homes or interact with others. Most adults still had work to keep them occupied, but the same could not be said for the younger generation. School had transitioned to online learning, leaving many students with a lot of free time with nothing to do. A lot of them turned to their favourite content creators for entertainment. Which lead to a huge spike in viewership on the platform Twitch.
From March to April 2020, the average Twitch viewership grew by 52% (twitchtracker.com). Twitch is a streaming platform where content creators can broadcast live content and interact with their viewers in real time. While gaming remains the most popular content on Twitch, there are also sections dedicated to art and “Just Chatting” for those who do not play video games. However, we simultaneously saw the creation and rise of the gambling section. Sadly, the twitchtracker site does not show the gambling section stats because it has been removed from the site, but we will get into some rough estimates later.
Harmful Digital Marketing Strategies
A harmful digital marketing strategy used by online casinos was to advertise their sites to young people. The main strategy used by online casinos was sponsorship. They would pay some of the biggest streamers very large sums of money to gamble for a certain amount of time on the site. There is no accurate way of telling the age demographic of a person’s channel because most kids make the account putting a fake ages to watch restricted content. However, we could assume that the majority of viewers are young.
A notable example is the Quebec-based streamer xQc. He is a long-standing, influential figure on Twitch who, like many other streamers, saw a massive increase in viewership during the pandemic, averaging 50,000 to 60,000 viewers per stream. When xQc gambled, he would wager millions of dollars almost daily. While he often lost vast sums of money, he also occasionally won enormous amounts. This exposed his young viewers to the dangerous highs and lows of gambling, reinforcing the addictive chase for dopamine that comes with big wins.
Another harmful digital marketing practice by online casinos is the ever-growing presence in the mainstream media. If you watch any major league, you can easily find the logo of an online casino or sportsbook on the screen. Which is not a major concern.
The bigger concern is that a very popular segment on pre-game talk shows are the members on the panel will talk about the betting line of the game and give their opinion on which one they would pick. From personal experience as someone who grew up playing and watching sports, I would watch the game with my parents and siblings. I can imagine that when a young kid sees this segment. He will turn to his dad and ask what do these numbers means. Which puts the parents in an uncomfortable spot of either explaining what gambling is to their child or convincing their curious child to forget about it which he will probably look up later on his own. Which could introduce gambling to young children. These two digital marketing strategies are very dangerous because they expose a very harmful activity to such a vulnerable group of people.
The Positives and Challenges of Gambling Regulation in Quebec
Are there any positives to gambling? You have to pick your poison. While it’s true that gambling can be a fun recreational activity to enjoy with friends and family, it is also easy to become addicted. One positive aspect of gambling in Quebec is that it is regulated by a crown corporation called Loto-Québec, which is controlled by the government. They operate physical casinos, an online casino, a lottery system, and a sportsbook. All profits generated by the company are reinvested back into the population.
However, there are a few areas for improvement. The sportsbook, called Mise-O-Jeu, is outdated and often offers unfavourable odds for bettors, which drives many to use private online sportsbooks instead. Additionally, laws surrounding online gambling should be tightened to prevent foreign online casinos from accepting bets from Quebecers. They should promote the fact they have an online casino where you can play live table top games which is not a know fact by many people.