Miller Hall. 7 p.m., on a Tuesday. The TV is off, the kitchen is empty, but gathered around the common room’s round table are 12 freshmen, chatting over the clacking of poker chips on a plastic table.
This isn’t just a Tufts phenomenon. It happens across the United States. From sports betting to casino games to placing wagers on lawn mower racing, more youth than ever have been exposed to gambling. According to a study published by Pew Research Center in October 2025, 17% of adults under 30 said they’ve placed a sports bet. Three years prior, only 7% could say the same.
This exposure to gambling begins earlier than ever. The Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts identified a surge in gambling prevalence among eighth-grade students. Between 2019 and 2021, the percentage of eighth grade students who participated in gambling activities increased from 31% to 36%. From 2021 to 2023, that figure jumped from 36% to 59%––a staggering 23% increase.
These behaviors include opening paywalled “loot boxes” in video games, microtransactions in which players spend real or in-game currency to receive rewards of varying value. From Call of Duty to Candy Crush, these features have become commonplace in modern gaming. According to a study by the Central Queensland University, 62% of the most popular video games include some kind of loot box. The increased prevalence of these gambling-type rewards in youth video games has elevated concerns that children are being conditioned at a younger age to gambling behavior.
An article from UCLA Health underscores these concerns, explaining that gambling activates the brain’s reward system in a similar way to addictive drugs. It triggers the release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for sensations of pleasure, creating cognitive distortions that reinforce risky behaviors.
Luke* is a Tufts student and a frequenter of Encore Casino. He most often plays blackjack and reported a net loss over the past two years of nearly $400.
“I enjoyed it…I never gambled more than I was comfortable with. I was often gambling profits, so I wasn’t dipping into my savings,” Luke said. He was cognizant of the dangers of gambling solo, too: “I’ll only go if other people are with me, because I feel like that is [otherwise] a slippery slope.”
Sports betting is another avenue for betting, a growing sector of the legalized gambling market. The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago examined sports betting among young adults in the state of Massachusetts. They found that sports betting increased social connectedness and engagement with sports. The majority of the young adults surveyed most commonly bet on football and basketball and use platforms such as DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM to place these wagers.
“So my four friends and I, we each pick a leg for a parlay,” said Tufts student Chris,* describing his weekly “group parlay,” a singular bet that relies on two or more independent wagers, called “legs,” for a payout. “We all pick a leg, and whoever has the worst leg of the week pays for next week. Or if we all win, then we all split the winnings…there’s a fallacy that you’re going to win…it’s fun.”
Chris also spoke to his personal parlays. “Especially with FanDuel, DraftKings, with sports betting…all you have to do is click two buttons. It’s such a quick and easy access and it drains your bank account. Obviously, you know you do it in increments, or you know you’re too far gone in terms of gambling, and you’re not going to notice that type of deficit until it really hits your bank account. So it’s very accessible. They can say all these things about how they don’t want people to bet their life away, but that’s the behavior you see. You see [betting platforms] trying to take as much as they can from you.”
Aahan Mehra (‘27), a member of a group of Tufts students who compete in the Intercollegiate Poker Association (IPA), defended his pastime. “I think poker differs from traditional gambling in a few ways…if you play long term, you can really minimize your variance, and if you’re a good winning player you can make money in the long run with 99% confidence.”
He emphasized the less predatory nature of self-organized poker: “[When playing with friends,] all the money stays between the people who bought in,” Mehra said. “If you go to the casino, you play roulette. On average, you’re just going to lose money because you know those games are rigged.”
Indeed, with no house taking a cut of the pot, the wagered funds can only change hands from peer to peer. It’s not just saving money, though. A sizable portion of our interviewees expressed that poker at Tufts served as a valuable form of socializing.
Joaquin Tahta (‘28) told the Tribune that “unless [socializing] is a deep conversation, it involves alcohol or drugs, or a video game or something. I like that all you have to do [in poker] is just sit around a table and play cards for you and a bunch of your friends to talk. It’s very hard for that to happen normally, and poker is a great way to bring everybody together.”
Tufts student Rick* (‘27) agreed with these pro-social effects, but also emphasized the large stakes involved. On some nights, buy-ins reached into the hundreds of dollars, with one person losing $300 on a single night.
This social palliative may apply disproportionately to men, which Oliver Kane (‘28) attested to, speculating that it’s “probably because they are more naturally prone to taking risks.” A study published by Cambridge University in 2006 endorses his understanding of male behavior. It highlights that women had a greater perception of the probabilities of negative consequences that derive from engaging in risky behaviors as compared to men.
Gender differences may play a role in drawing people to gambling, but that doesn’t account for the agency of the betting platforms. Targeted design of the gambling activities plays a role, according to Jason Mei, (‘28) who pointed out that “gambling is being promoted also through more male-centered activities like sports,” which he concludes “leads to the gendered divide.”
Indeed, promotion is key to this business model. Sports betting companies lure potential customers with promotional offers of bonus bets and extra winnings. “It’s funny because they have all this anti-gambling, tiny little text on the ads at the bottom, and yet, [sports betting companies] are promoting this huge screen of like, ‘50% profit boost’ or ‘sign up now and win your first $5 parlay; you’ll make $200 for free.’ It’s just priming you to get into it,” Chris recalled.
The NORC study contextualizes this understanding of the industry’s business model, in which participants suggested that advertisements targeted young adults and that gambling spread through “campus culture” and “word of mouth.” Additionally, it highlighted that technology made gambling easier and more accessible. Tahta sees this as a clear negative, telling the Tribune that “gambling is 100% being normalized and promoted throughout society, which is quite unfortunate as it is basically like a drug.”
At Tufts and beyond, gambling of all forms has become increasingly prevalent in our social life. From the Miller poker tables to multi-leg parlays on FanDuel, more people are using gambling as a source of social connection. At their best, games like poker offer healthy avenues for competition and conversation over the backdrop of a game. But at their worst, these apps and games advertise lofty rewards, only to cause serious financial loss and foster addiction-like behavior.
*This name has been changed to reflect the interviewee’s desire for anonymity
Photo by Sascha Dembling