Online Gambling and the Impact on College Students
The recent fad of online gaming has had an unexpected
consequence: College kids are now gambling online and finding themselves
in debt for more than their four years of college tuition. How could
this happen and what's the solution?
It's
amazing to me that when I'm at the library trying to finish a paper or
research, most other students seems to be focused on an entirely different
subject – online gambling. More and more often there are
articles in the paper or on the news about how college kids and young
adults are losing money hand-over-fist playing in online casinos or poker or
blackjack online. There seems to be some truth to this story.
Various expose programs on American TV show the dangers of gambling online
and how compulsive behavior can land someone in debt in the hundreds of
thousands of dollars. And that's without the college tuition.
At any rate, in order to better understand the phenomenon of online
gambling, it's best to take a look at the various games offered.
The
standard games that everyone knows are Poker and Blackjack. Poker
had, for years, been gaining popularity and almost everyone knows at least
how to play the game. Poker perpetuates the myth of the tough guy
playing against everyone and somehow, against all odds, he succeeds and
rakes in his fortune in multi-colored stacks of chips. There are
literally thousands of books advertising “can't be beat”
strategies and “guarantees” of fortune and fame. To
contribute to the mystique and appeal, poker's now on TV and celebrities
play in ridiculous celebrity tournaments. There's a World Series of Poker.
There must be a world series of everything then.
There's even a
world series of blackjack. Although not nearly as popular as poker,
blackjack is steadily becoming popular because of its easy to learn rules
and the all-too-common myth that it can be beaten. Blackjack has an
even more seemingly harmless draw than poker because it's just two card
and it's just to 21. How hard can it be? Just with poker, blackjack
is being dramatized on TV and in magazines. Blackjack is easier to
lose because it's such a fast game and before you realize it, you're
faster-than-you-thought-possible out of money.
Then there's the
online casino games like slots,
keno, video poker and even
bingo. Slots
may be more addictive sitting at home playing virtual coins just hitting
the mouse button over and over. Keno probably doesn't really have
much of an impact on college kids and their gambling habits. Most
college kids have likely never heard of keno yet alone played it.
Video poker, however, has the allure of poker and the
ease-of-play of slots. Its learning curve is apparently much more
gentle than poker because you're only playing against the machine and
there's not the pressure of "live" poker and the other human poker
players. But, like slots, it's very easy to slip virtual coin after
virtual coin into the machine. And, bingo probably isn't much of a
hit with the college kids. It has the same trappings of the
other online casino games, however;
it's easy to part with money that's not physically in your hands.
You don't actually take the money out and hand it to another person or
drop it into a slot.