‘Rite of passage’: School gambling labelled rife as experts warn of dangers

Students are illegally gambling online, getting around supposed age limits with ease and using phones to place bets while at school.

Social media gambling influencers, ads on games or streaming platforms, the ease of setting up betting accounts and the normalisation or parental facilitation of betting have contributed to a rise in teen gambling habits, experts say.

It’s illegal for anyone to gamble under the age of 18, yet 2025 Australia Institute research that analysed data from 2017, 2023 and 2024 found more than 902,000 Australians aged 12 to 19 gambled annually, enough to fill the MCG about nine times over. About 600,000 were aged between 12 and 17.

Monash University associate professor Charles Livingstone, a gambling researcher, said it was easy for teens to set up betting accounts, especially if they already had money from a part-time job.

“If you beg, borrow or steal somebody’s ID, you can set up an account almost instantly,” Livingstone said.

He called the online media presence of gambling promoters “extraordinary at the moment”, with social media influencers using gambling as “their schtick” to promote poker machines as well as illegal gambling sites, including offshore casinos that are unlicensed in Australia.

Livingstone said there were also “weird little operators” taking bets on school-level football games and on club-level soccer in suburban Melbourne.

“At every level you can think of, and a lot you can’t, there is somebody trying to sell kids on gambling.”

Jack, 22, given a pseudonym as he asked to remain anonymous, went to a private school and said roughly 25 per cent of his year 12 peers were betting. He started gambling when he was about 16.

“A mate had a big win. [I was thinking] that seems easy. That’s when you start going along with it. You either win, and think it’s easy, and then you lose and you start chasing that loss,” he said.

“Boys punted at school – on our phones, in class, at lunchtime, just wherever.”

His classmates weren’t allowed phones in class but snuck them in. They made fake accounts under their names using false ages and deposited money but never verified their accounts.

“It sounds stupid – even if we won a lot of money, we couldn’t withdraw it. We were just young and dumb. Not making the right decisions.”

After he graduated, he put all of his money – $3500 – on one horse and lost it in one bet. That’s when he knew he had to stop.