This week’s digest is all about… video games!

Gaming is easy to talk about badly. It can have real downsides for boys and young men if it slips into compulsive behavior or crowds out offline life. But it can also offer tremendous benefits. This week we walk through some research and resources on video games, and connect the findings to our broader work.

The Feed

Walking through different ways video games might affect mental health

Gaming is not one thing, nor are its effects. This paper walks through 13 plausible mechanisms through which gaming could influence mental health, and shows how to translate intuitions into causal models that can be rigorously tested. The authors suggest that researchers should study specific features and causal pathways, rather than treat “gaming” as a single variable. So, for example, instead of studying whether gaming is good or bad for mental health, researchers can explore whether late-night, high-intensity gaming worsens mood by disrupting sleep, or whether social gaming improves well-being relative to solo gaming.

The same shift would benefit research on pornography. Rather than testing associations between porn use and mental health, researchers ought to rigorously test specific causal mechanisms.

A new video game play dataset

Researchers at Oxford released Open Play, a new longitudinal dataset which includes psychological measures (mental health, well-being, etc.) and digital trace data across multiple gaming platforms (Steam, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android), time diaries, and a host of other measures.

I downloaded the dataset, threw it into Claude Code, and spent half an hour playing around. Here’s one finding: Overwatch 2 players have the lowest average well-being of any major game in the dataset. (If you’ve played Overwatch, you will not be surprised.)

Some other questions you can use the Open Play dataset to explore:

• Do people stay up later gaming after a stressful day?

• Is the relationship between gaming and well-being different for weekend versus weekday gamers?

• How does becoming a caregiver reshape gaming patterns?

• How do reaction times relate to time spent gaming?

Differences between problematic gaming and problematic gambling

An fMRI meta-analysis comparing Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) and Gambling Disorder (GD) found no significant shared activation cluster in the brain, suggesting different underlying cognitive mechanisms. While GD was associated with greater activity in regions linked to reward valuation, IGD was associated with greater activity in regions associated with attention, monitoring, and emotional-cognitive regulation. Treating these disorders as neurologically similar may be incorrect.

Did better video games pull young men out of the workforce?

Between 2000 and 2015, working hours for men aged 21–30 fell about 12 percent—significantly more than for older men, women, or any other group. The economists who wrote this paper traced where those lost work hours went, and found that the majority went to video gaming and recreational computer use. The paper’s key insight is that gaming functions as a “leisure luxury” for young men—meaning the more free time they have, the disproportionately more they devote to it. As gaming technology improved through the 2000s, they argue, it raised the value of free time relative to paid work. The paper doesn’t argue gaming caused young men to stop working, but that it got good enough to shift the calculation, especially for those living with parents for whom the financial cost of working less was cushioned.

→ Of note: Over at AIBM.org, Thomas O’Rourke’s analysis of American Time Use Survey data finds that both male and female NEETs spend roughly 5 hours per day watching TV and engaging in “other” leisure activities, but male NEETs spend roughly 2 additional hours per day playing video games.

What else we’re reading

• Gambling, Drugs, and Porn: What I Learned at a Conference on Vice Policy - Isaac Rose-Berman

• How early porn exposure is impacting young men - USA Today

• Siena/SBU Survey: Over half of men 18-49 have sportsbook accounts - Siena & St. Bonaventure University

• Social Snacks: AI Companions and the Hunger for Connection - Data & Society

• CFTC sues Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois over prediction market regulation - CNBC

• Do 3pm to 3am screentime bans work? - Center for Teen Flourishing

• Teens are using AI—but not how we think - Brookings: TechTank podcast

• Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report - Ofcom

Events & Funding Opportunities

• *New* Webinar: Financial Health, Gambling, and Prevention: A Cross-Industry Conversation | April 16th, 2026.

• Online Gambling and The Public Health Movement: An International Symposium | Boston, MA | April 24th, 2026.

• *New* Young Futures Block Party | Austin, TX | May 13-14, 2026.

• *New* Young Futures Express Yourself Grant | Supporting bold solutions that help girls, boys and trans- and gender-expansive young people build confidence, belonging, and agency in a digitally shaped world. | Proposals due May 19th, 2026, 8 PM ET.

• International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking | Las Vegas, NV | May 26-28, 2026.

• National Conference on Gambling Addiction & Responsible Gambling | Nashville, TN | July 22-24, 2026 | Call for presentations closed.

What did we miss this week? Do you have an upcoming conference or study we could feature in the next edition? How do you think we should design video games for well-being? Let us know at bmonline@substack.com, or shoot me a message here.

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The average American boy first encounters pornography around age 12. By the time he graduates high school, he’s spent years consuming content that looks very different from what researchers have studied—or what most parents imagine.

But the research hasn’t kept pace. And neither have parents, educators, policymakers, or funders. As a result, young people are navigating unprecedented, always-on access to sexually explicit content with very little guidance or honest conversation.

In this episode, we bring together leading researchers to take stock of what we know, what we don’t, and where the field needs to go next. You can view a recording of the webinar below, or listen to the audio on our podcast feed.

Researchers: If you are studying these questions and would like to be part of a research convening this summer, please contact David at david@aibm.org.

And stay tuned as we’ll continue publishing more interviews with pornography researchers over the coming weeks and months.

Finally, if you want a good laugh, here’s a clever public service announcement from New Zealand’s Keep It Real Online initiative:

Last week, a jury found Meta and YouTube liable for harming a teenage girl’s mental health. The $6 million verdict targeted the design features of the platforms—infinite scroll, autoplay, and algorithmic amplification—rather than the content.

That’s a meaningful legal distinction. As my colleague David has pointed out, the verdict is a warning shot for sports betting apps and prediction markets, which rely on the same engagement-maximizing design features as social media.

For more on why the Meta/Youtube case is so important, see this discussion by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin. For a helpful guide to the legal issues at play, see this article by Jonathan Cederbaum in Lawfare.

Pornography Research Webinar

Please join us tomorrow (April 2nd) at 2 p.m. ET for a webinar on what we know about pornography use and its effects. Bailey Way, Shane Kraus, and Josh Grubbs will present their findings alongside Marc Potenza and Emily Rothman. Register here.

The Feed

Two bills take aim at sports prediction market contracts

On March 23rd, Senators Adam Schiff (D-Calif) and John Curtis (R-Utah) introduced legislation to ban prediction market contracts tied to sports and casino-style games. Three days later, Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) went further, adding contracts related to military acts, elections, and other government actions.

Addictive technologies are displacement machines

Derek Thompson’s recent piece in The Argument threads the needle between those who blame phones for every modern problem, and those who decry the whole thing as an unfounded moral panic.

“My argument, in short, is this: The smartphone is not a poison, it’s a displacement machine. When you stare into your phone, you are displacing some other activity — sleeping, socializing, playing outside, paying attention in class, watching TV…”

The larger takeaway should not be that displacement is benign because they’re only replacing already-degraded alternatives. The more important conclusion: we need to proactively rebuild and invest in alternatives that promote flourishing.

More evidence on the financial harms of sports betting

A new Federal Reserve Bank of New York report finds that legalizing mobile sports betting increases sportsbook spending by a factor of 10 (from $2.50 to $46), and raises quarterly take-up by 3.1 percentage points. Using credit report data, they find modest increases in delinquency (+0.31 percentage points from a 10.71% base), with the strongest effects among those under 40. The paper also finds significant spillovers across state lines. One of the report’s more striking findings is that average sportsbook spending continues to rise after legalization, with no leveling off in sight.

This adds to the existing evidence of sports bettings deleterious impact on financial security.

Causal evidence for marketing’s impact on gambling

Most evidence linking marketing and gambling behavior has been correlational. A new randomized control trial aims to fill the gap by splitting bettors into two groups, one of which opted out of direct marketing from gambling operators. Over two weeks, the opt-out group had spent 39% less and reported 67% fewer short-term gambling harms compared with the control.

The paper should be taken with a grain of salt, as many of those allocated to the opt-out group didn’t actually opt out and were excluded from the analysis. Still, it bolsters evidence that marketing both attracts new gamblers and amplifies existing gambling behaviors.

What else we’re reading

• Senator Chris Murphy on prediction markets - Pablo Torres Finds Out

• Interview with CASPR’s Nicholas Reville: Public Policy Misses the Mark on Problem Gambling - Gambling Insider

• How to win slots and influence people - Bloomberg

• The Political Backlash to Prediction Markets Has Arrived - Front Office Sports

• News Brief: Washington Attorney General Sues Kalshi - Event Horizon

• A Jury Hit Meta With a $375 Million Verdict. The Open Internet May Pay the Price. - Reason

• What we’re missing about the social media verdict - TechnoSapiens

• A blow against free speech in California - The Washington Post

• If You Want to Build Community, You Have to “Waste Time” with People - Vivek Murthy

Events & Funding Opportunities

• Online Gambling and The Public Health Movement: An International Symposium | Boston, MA | April 24th, 2026.

• International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking | Las Vegas, NV | May 26-28, 2026.

• National Conference on Gambling Addiction & Responsible Gambling | Nashville, TN | July 22-24, 2026 | Call for presentations closed.

What did we miss this week? Do you have an upcoming conference or study we could feature in the next edition? Do you have thoughts on Derek Thompson’s idea of a “displacement machines”? Let us know at bmonline@substack.com, or shoot me a message here.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to stay up to date on Boys & Men Online.

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1. Sports betting doesn’t belong on prediction markets — and shouldn’t be accessible to anyone under 18.

2. If we’re legalizing online gambling, we need to actually enforce it — which means shutting down illicit offshore sites, especially for young people.

3. Legal sportsbooks must do more to protect users from compulsive use and financial ruin.

Over the past few weeks, there have been meaningful developments on all three fronts.

Before diving in, it’s worth grounding this discussion in what’s at stake, as my colleague laid out in a new PBS roundtable:

The Meta Verdict Is a Liability Warning for Sportsbooks

A jury recently found Meta and YouTube liable for $6 million in punitive and compensatory damages tied to addictive design and mental health harms. That case is a warning shot for tech platforms, including sports betting and prediction markets. As Michael McCann writes in Sportico:

The case invites questions about the addictive qualities of sports betting and sports prediction apps and their exposure to similar legal theories. Sports betting and sports prediction apps might be more vulnerable to arguments they cause users to become addicted and suffer various harms.

Mark Gottlieb of the Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI), which is suing DraftKings for unfair and deceptive practices, told McCann:

Much like the social media companies on trial in Los Angeles, the leading sports gambling platforms all use—and compete on the basis of—advanced algorithms created by tracking every click and demographic detail of each of their users to maximize time on device and engagement with their products.

This is the first major deceptive practices lawsuit against a sports betting app to move to a full trial. Legal analysts are comparing it to significant, early lawsuits against the tobacco companies.

PHAI is also supporting a new lawsuit in Pennsylvania alleging that sportsbooks are using fast-paced microbets and defective design to make users addicted to gambling:

This argument is reminiscent of litigation against Meta and other social media companies accused of designing their platforms to cause children to become addicted through engagement boosters such as infinite scrolling and manipulation of algorithmically tailored feeds of photos and videos. Here, the sportsbook apps are depicted as knowingly taking advantage of people with gambling addictions and worsening those addictions.

While the courts consider liability, Congress is moving with unusual urgency on prediction markets.

A Flurry of Prediction Market Legislation

Several bills assert that prediction markets should not function as sportsbooks:

Prediction Markets Are Gambling Act

Introduced in the Senate by Sens. Adam Schiff and John Curtis on March 23, this bill would prohibit CFTC-registered entities from listing contracts that resemble sports bets or casino-style games. It is the Senate companion to Titus’s House sports bill (below) and frames those markets as gambling rather than legitimate financial contracts.

Fair Markets and Sports Integrity Act

This House bill from Rep. Dina Titus would ban prediction markets from offering sports bets and casino-style contracts outside state regulation.

Prediction Markets Security and Integrity Act

Introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal on March 11, this is the broadest consumer-protection bill in the set: it would impose federal rules on insider trading and manipulation, ban markets tied to war, death, and military action, require age verification, and push authority back toward the states.

Skepticism is warranted about the passage of any of these bills. But one detail is worth noting: the bipartisan Schiff–Curtis bill comes from states without legal online sports betting, which weakens allegations of industry protectionism or inconsistent views.

At the state level, a Nevada court issued a temporary restraining order blocking Kalshi’s event contracts (including sports) unless it obtains a state license. It explicitly treats these offerings as illegal, unlicensed gambling under state law, even though the platform claims federal oversight.

Public opinion is largely aligned. Americans view purchasing event contracts on prediction markets as closer to gambling than investing (61% to 8%), based on our latest poll with Ipsos.

There have also been several bills addressing ethics and insider trading on prediction markets:

• Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026

• End Prediction Market Corruption Act

• Event Contract Enforcement Act

• DEATH BETS Act

• BETS OFF Act

In our poll with Ipsos, just 9% of respondents say they are confident that prediction markets could prevent individuals with non-public information from unfairly profiting on the platforms.

States Look to Refine Regulatory Approach

Several states are contemplating reform bills to address the harms of legalized sports betting. The following bills cluster around three themes: harm reduction (deposit limits, credit card bans), operator constraints (ads, promos, limiting bettors), and market boundaries (especially around prediction markets).

Colorado SB 26-131 (passed committee)

Limits deposits, bans credit cards and push notifications, restricts advertising, and prohibits sportsbooks from limiting winning bettors.

Kentucky HB 904 (passed House)

Raises the age to 21, mandates acceptance of bets up to $1,000, increases transparency around limits, and bans partnerships with prediction market platforms.

Maryland HB 518 (passed House)

Bans college prop bets, prohibits credit card deposits, and requires deposit/time limits.

Massachusetts S 302 (passed committee)

Raises taxes, bans in-play and prop bets, restricts advertising, imposes affordability checks, and mandates data sharing for research.

New York A7962 (in committee)

Imposes deposit and wagering caps, bans credit cards, and restricts advertising and promotions.

You can find more details and analysis of each of these bills from .

Offshore and Illicit Gambling Enforcement

The third front, illicit access, is moving more unevenly but in a clear direction.

Last August, all 50 state attorneys general urged the DOJ to crack down on offshore gambling, calling it a “rampant” and growing threat. They specifically asked DOJ to seize domains and assets; pursue injunctions; and work with payment processors to block transactions.

In the meantime, some states are targeting dual-currency sweepstakes apps that mimic casino gambling:

Minnesota HF 4410 would prohibit online sweepstakes games that use dual-currency systems and simulate casino gambling. The legislation followed AG enforcement against illegal gambling sites, including both offshore operators and sweepstakes platforms.

Maryland HB 1140 would prohibit operating, promoting, or supporting online sweepstakes games and would require the state to deny or revoke licenses tied to that activity.

Takes on Gambling in Brokerage Apps

Reining in the Chaos

Federal courts, Congress, state legislatures, and attorneys general are all addressing the chaotic proliferation of online gambling. The Meta/YouTube verdict challenges the addictive design of sportsbook products; Congress is moving to close the prediction-market loophole; and states are tightening rules on both legal operators and gray-market alternatives.

A growing policy consensus treats online gambling less like a neutral entertainment product and more like a high-risk, behavior-shaping system that requires guardrails.

Stay tuned: we’ll continue tracking developments in policy, enforcement, and litigation as they happen.

Yesterday, we released results from our poll with Ipsos on prediction markets. A few takeaways:

• Americans don’t buy the rebrand: Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour took pains in a recent interview to stress the distinction between prediction markets and gambling. Americans don’t buy it; 61% of respondents view prediction markets as closer to gambling than investing, while just 1 in 10 view it as closer to investing.

• Public sentiment is negative: Fewer than 1 in 20 Americans say prediction markets are good for society, with 38% saying they are bad, and 34% saying they are neither good nor bad.

• Young men are early adopters: 1 in 4 young men have used at least one sports betting, prediction market, or other gambling platform in the last six months.

If prediction markets are new to you, Sam Schneider offers a clear and entertaining overview.

The Feed

Online betting is reshaping who seeks gambling treatment

Addiction psychiatrist Timothy Fong, co-director of UCLA's Gambling Studies Program, tells Nautilus that the rise of online betting is changing the face of gambling addiction: treatment seekers are getting younger, and women's gambling appears to be rising even as help-seeking among women stays low. He also walks through biological, psychological, and social treatment options.

From our DMs:

Self-regulation tools don’t work if users can turn them off

A study of 24,453 Australian online sports bettors — tracking every wager over a full year — finds that bettors are 7–8 percentage points more likely to bet after either a win or a loss. After wins, they raise their stakes by 41%; after losses, they shift toward longer odds. The average bettor loses AUD 2,561 per year.

They also find that only 13% of bettors ever use a safe-gambling tool, and do so inconsistently, activating after losing streaks and then abandoning after winning streaks. The only tools that actually change behavior are the ones the user can’t override. The finding gives reason to be measured about the proliferation of voluntary self-control apps across adjacent domains, from porn to gaming to screen time.

Gen Z turning to gambling and high-risk investments to catch up

A Northwestern Mutual survey finds nearly a third of Gen Z Americans are invested in or considering crypto (32%) and sports betting (32%). Among those participating or considering it, 73% say they feel financially behind and see high risk as a faster path to their goals — a figure that rises to 80% specifically among Gen Z.

We often focus on the similarities between sports betting, porn, and other digital technologies—addictive design, for instance. But there are important differences. Sports betting and crypto are often understood as pathways to financial advancement; for porn or problematic gaming, that narrative makes less sense.

What else we’re reading

• When Teenagers Are Banned From Public Life - HopeLab

• Situating problematic gaming and psychotic-like experiences in the adolescent landscape of affordances: A cohort study - Paquin et al.

• Connectome-based predictive modelling of problematic gaming in youth from the ABCD study - Park et al.

• Connectome-based prediction of problematic use of social media in

  adolescents: Findings from the ABCD study - Park et al.

• The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all - Taylor Lorenz in The Guardian

• Joint statement of security and privacy scientists and researchers on Age Assurance - reported in Politico

• Generation AI: What Kids and Families Think About AI - Common Sense Media

• The Family Tech Cycle: Navigating Screens, Devices, and Social Media - Joan Ganz Cooney Center

• All wired up and nowhere to go - Halina Bennet in Slow Boring

Events & Funding Opportunities

• Common Sense Media Summit | San Francisco, CA | March 23-24

• Online Gambling and The Public Health Movement: An International Symposium | Boston, MA | April 24th, 2026.

• International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking | Las Vegas, NV | May 26-28, 2026.

• National Conference on Gambling Addiction & Responsible Gambling | Nashville, TN | July 22-24, 2026 | Call for presentations closed.

What did we miss this week? Do you have an upcoming conference or study we could feature in the next edition? Do you have an intuition about how pathways into problematic gambling may have changed over the past decade? Let us know at bmonline@substack.com, or shoot me a message here.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to stay up to date on Boys & Men Online.

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A New York bill targeting harmful chatbot design features—rather than focusing on downstream harms—may signal a new trend in tech regulation for minors.

Last month, a N.Y. bill aimed at restricting unsafe chatbot features for minors (S9051)—crafted by Sen. Kristen Gonzalez with the Attorney General’s office—moved out of the Senate Internet & Technology Committee.

Much of the existing and proposed legislation around chatbots is focused on preventing the most dramatic harms—for example, by requiring platforms to take measures that prevent encouragement of self-harm and the generation of sexually explicit material. This bill, by contrast, would bar chatbots displaying behaviors that simulate companionship when interacting with minors—like use of first-person pronouns, or suggesting to the user that it is human.

The idea, basically, is to move upstream. Rather than catalogue every downstream harm, target the design mechanics that enable attachment and dependency in the first place. Whether or not it passes, S9051 could be an important bellwether for that approach.

The Feed

A 50-state scorecard for gambling policy…

The Center for Addiction Science, Research, and Policy (CASPR) has released scorecards evaluating states’ gambling policies. They offer the most points for not allowing iCasino and sports gambling apps, followed by strong restrictions like mandatory loss limits.

… and a 50-state scorecard for policies around childhood in the digital age

The policy team at the Anxious Generation has introduced the Childhood Index, a 50-state ranking evaluating how well states are protecting children online and supporting offline childhood. The index grades states on policies like phone-free school rules, age-verification requirements, and gubernatorial leadership. Utah and New York lead the pack, earning the designation of national leaders.

New sexual behavior dataset

Writer and sex researcher Aella released results from her Big Kink Survey, a 970k-respondent self-report survey covering sexual preferences and experiences along with demographic variables. Alongside a data explorer tool, she’s also shared a subsample of the full dataset for download (with particularly sensitive responses redacted).

While she released a version re-weighted to better match population demographics, the dataset is still a convenience sample promoted through her own fairly niche audience—so the resulting bias likely isn’t entirely corrected by demographic controls.

That said, it’s a cool dataset worth exploring. For example, a 2020 paper by Aleksandar Štulhofer showed that non-consensual sexual behavior was predicted by callousness, but not past porn use. And with Aella’s much-larger sample, we can at least do the simplest non-causal check and see they’re positively correlated in her sample.

(Of course, this doesn’t imply causality, and it doesn’t incorporate porn use as a variable. That’d be a natural next step.)

Pew survey finds strong race and class angles to teen AI-use

A recent Pew survey finds that Black teens are about twice as likely as white teens to say they’ve used AI chatbots for emotional support/advice (21% vs. 8%), and Black parents are more comfortable with their children doing so (27% OK with emotional support vs 17% of White parents). This may reflect class differences: 30% of parents making below $30k report being okay with emotional support use, versus 18% of parents making >$75k.

Differing use rates could be a product of unequal access to emotional support, but it might also simply reflect different attitudes towards AI: Black teens are significantly more likely to be extremely or very confident using chatbots (37% vs. 23% of White teens), for instance.

Black and Hispanic adults are also especially likely to engage in sports betting, compared to white adults.

Surprising feelings about sports gambling

Two findings jumped out from a recent Sacred Heart University poll examining perceptions of sports gambling.

First, 53% of respondents affirmed that the sports gambling industry behaves completely or mostly responsibly, versus 31% who said the industry behaves somewhat or very irresponsibly. I’ll admit I’m surprised trust is this high, especially after recent high profile sports integrity scandals.

Second, when asked about preferred accessibility, respondents were roughly evenly divided between wanting sports betting more accessible (31%), less accessible (28%), and equally accessible (31%). Strikingly, the share who wanted sport betting less accessible (28%) was barely greater than the share who said sport betting should not be legal, period (27%). In this survey, at least, there is essentially no one who wants sports betting legal but more difficult to access.

An interview on violent porn and porn research

In an interview with Undark, psychologist Melissa de Roos discusses the proliferation of child sexual abuse material, links between violent porn and violent behavior, and the difficulty of researching porn. She touches on results from her recent paper showing that perceived realism mediates the relationship between violent porn and violent behavior:

Violent pornography, in and of itself, does not typically or necessarily lead to real-world sexual violence. You tend to need to have other ingredients present as well. Now, if you are watching something and you think, “Wow, that is insane, that is so not realistic,” you are going to be less likely to adopt that into your blueprint of how a relationship works or a sexual encounter works.

What else we’re reading

• Launch of AI Psychological Harms Research Coalition

• How strong is New York’s “illegal gambling” case against Valve’s loot boxes? - Ars Technica

• Getting Global Age Assurance Right: What We Got Wrong and What’s Changing - Discord

• We are all going to regret Kalshi - Dave Karpf

• FTC declines to enforce a kids privacy law for data collected to verify users’ ages - The Verge

• Age assurance as a spectrum: a risk-based approach from a European perspective - 5rights Foundation

• Former Top Trump Official Is Going After Prediction Markets - Wired

Events & Funding Opportunities

• *New* Online Gambling and The Public Health Movement: An International Symposium | Boston, MA | April 24th, 2026.

• Movember Request for Proposal - Esports and Gaming Mental Health Awareness Training | Closes March 6th, 2026.

• International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking | Las Vegas, NV | May 26-28, 2026.

• National Conference on Gambling Addiction & Responsible Gambling | Nashville, TN | July 22-24, 2026 | Call for presentations closed.

What did we miss this week? Do you have an upcoming conference or study we could feature in the next edition? What role do you think culture and policy should play in managing vice? Let us know at bmonline@substack.com, or shoot me a message here.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to stay up to date on Boys & Men Online.

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• Shifting the focus from “how much screentime” to “what’s on the screen?”

• How to show interest, not fear, in your boys’ digital experiences.

• The core needs boys seek online: achievement, curiosity, escape, community, and identity.

• How to build competing interests offline that meet those same core human needs: e.g. sports, museums, planning trips, clubs.

• Online friends and communities are genuine support systems, often underrated, and sometimes even lifelines.

• Why structure matters more than bans or time limits: Using shared family spaces (e.g., computers in one room) and norms like “headphones are earned.”

• How to make parenting less tedious and more joyful.

Jim and Kruti offer more wisdom and practical tips throughout our 30-minute discussion. Here’s a 5-minute clip:

What did you think of the conversation, and what advice would you share?

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The American Enterprise Institute hosted a panel, Male Vice in an Internet Age, featuring our president Richard Reeves in conversation with Charles Fain Lehman and Daniel Cox (watch here). Their most interesting disagreement was about the role of policy and culture. Lehman’s view—which you might call “policy-first”—was channelled by Ross Douthat in a NYT piece that ran the next day:

In any society, politics is an arena for debates about the good life. The way the government taxes and spends and bans and regulates has a powerful effect on the behavior of its citizens, and what the law allows or forbids has some effect — not decisive, but inevitably influential — on what ordinary people think and do.

Richard Reeves was more wary about the role of the state versus the importance of agency and culture:

if we can kind of get to a place where we’re seeing heavy-handed law at least as the last resort rather than the first, that will lead to a better culture… I worry that if we end up reaching too quickly for prohibit prohibition, that will undermine the very character traits that we need to be able to live without it. (53:50)

Still, the tension between policy and culture shadows a wide area of agreement. Lehman, I suspect, agrees with Reeves that “the role of regulation is to add friction, [to] make it harder for [use] to become problematic use.”

The Feed

Does proximity to vice mean support for restrictions?

Eitan Hersh and Lucia Morissa-Corsetti put out a working paper (with accompanying Substack) on the relationship between exposure to vices and support for restrictions.

Across the board, they find that more frequent use is associated with more permissive attitudes towards regulation—even after controlling for demographic variables. The study also examines the attitudes of those who have a parent, child, partner, etc. who is a heavy user.

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that becoming a frequent user causes more lenient attitudes. We asked Eitan to speculate on the mechanism at play.

From our DMs:

This is one of our favorite replies so far—Eitan is entirely right: more research is needed.

Public opinion and technical guidance on age assurance tech

Age verification is spreading rapidly: most recently, Discord announced that it will required an ID or face scan for access beginning in March. A Common Sense Media report finds mixed feelings about the policy. A wide majority favor requiring age verification for pornographic websites (84%) and gambling services (80%). But around the same share say they are very or somewhat concerned about children finding ways around age verification (80%) and about their children’s age data being sold or shared without their consent (86%).

Getting to the nuts and bolts, the Knight-Georgetown Institute released a report on what age assurance architectures look like in practice. A central insight of the report is that there’s no singular use case for age assurance. Some approaches are better for safer default settings (e.g., restricting personalized feeds), while others are better suited for full blocking (e.g., pornographic content). Adults want verification, and they want efficacy and privacy. But it’s much less clear where they would land on the concrete tradeoffs across different architectures.

On attachment hacking

Tristan Harris interviews Zak Stein on how technologies like AI companions can hijack our attachment system. One of my takeaways is that hijacking mechanisms (whether targeted at attachment or attention) can go both ways. If we have a grasp of the design features by which AI companions capture our need for attachment, we can design technology with those mechanisms in mind:

If it feels like you can have a more engaging conversation with this machine than with your teacher, either the machine is way too fancy or your teacher’s not trained well, but it should be the case that the machine should make it [so that you say], “Wow, I want to talk about that with my teacher.” So don’t do the deep anthropomorphization.

What else we’re reading

• CFTC chief sides with prediction markets over state regulators in a legal battle with big implications - NBC News

• Not your dad’s old Playboy magazine: How AI is blurring the boundaries of sex, intimacy and emotional connection - Movember

• So we’re betting on everything now? - Good Work

• Super Bet Sunday - Bill Maher

• Who Calls 1-800-GAMBLER? Around Big Sports Events, It’s Often Young Men. - NYT

• The Football YouTubers Who Are Therapists for Troubled Fans - NYMag

• Deepfake Pornography is Resilient to Regulatory and Platform Shocks - Cuevas et al.

• TikTok’s infinite scroll is too addictive, say EU regulators - The Verge

• Gambling Addiction Research to See Federal Funding for First Time - Barron’s

• Instagram Chief Says Social Media Is Not ‘Clinically Addictive’ in Landmark Trial - NYT

Events & Funding Opportunities

• *New* Movember Request for Proposal - Esports and Gaming Mental Health Awareness Training | Closes March 6th, 2026.

• International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking | Las Vegas, NV | May 26-28, 2026.

• National Conference on Gambling Addiction & Responsible Gambling | Nashville, TN | July 22-24, 2026 | Call for presentations closed.

What did we miss this week? Do you have an upcoming conference or study we could feature in the next edition? What role do you think culture and policy should play in managing vice? Let us know at bmonline@substack.com, or shoot me a message here.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to stay up to date on Boys & Men Online.

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After reading Common Sense Media’s new report on gambling among boys aged 11-17—more on this soon—we reached out to some teachers to ask how gambling is showing up in their schools.

One teacher said students estimated that 70% of other senior boys place at least one bet per week, and mentioned one student who had bet 13k on college basketball this season. Another teacher described a high school junior whose parents are working with the school because he can’t stop gambling.

These anecdotes got me thinking about an anecdote from Harry Levant during a recent webinar on sports betting reforms by CASPR.

During a school presentation, Levant showed a DraftKings ad featuring Cam Wilder. Most of the 11th and 12th-graders didn’t know who he was, but the fifth and sixth-graders erupted when Cam Wilder’s picture went on the screen. Even if gambling starts to show up in high school, the groundwork is laid even earlier.

What’s next for sports betting in 2026? We’ll be hosting a webinar tomorrow (Feb. 5th) at 1 p.m. ET, with Brianne Doura-Schawohl (Campaign for Fairer Gambling), (Eilers & Krejcik Gaming), and (Straight to the Point Consulting). You can register here.

The Feed

Findings

Almost half of 17-year-old boys have gambled in the past year

Common Sense Media’s new report finds that 36% of boys age 11-17 have gambled in the past year, with the highest among 17-year-olds (49%). Of those who gamble, the majority (59%) report that gambling-related content “just started showing up” in their feeds—suggesting that algorithms are driving discovery.

Porn “onset” research may be measuring the wrong thing

When does porn use begin? Researchers often use “age of first exposure” as if it were equivalent to “age began regularly using porn”. A recent paper by AIBM fellow Bailey Way shows why this can be misleading. Grouping users by age of first exposure and age of regular use, the study finds three profiles. Early engagers (67%) and late engagers (25%) both saw porn at around the same age (~14), but diverged sharply on when they became regular users (~18 vs. ~39).

A smaller, third group (7%) uses porn the least, are the most religious, and report more distress about porn usage than later engagers—consistent with moral incongruence mechanism (distress about use despite relatively low use).

Policy & News

Senate hearing on impact of screen time on kids

The Senate Commerce Committee convened researchers last month for a hearing on tech and mental health among youth. The committee was unusually united; after Democratic senator Ben Ray Luján urged congress to subpoena social media CEOs over their “damaging” products, Chair Ted Cruz responded that Luján was “preaching to the choir.” Cruz is a co-sponsor, along with Sen. Brian Schatz, of the Kids Off Social Media Act, which would restrict social media platforms for users age 13-and-under, and restrict addictive content for users under 17.

Addictive social media design on trial in K.G.M. case

Addictive social media design is now being tested in court. The plaintiff, identified as K.G.M., is suing over claims that features like recommendation algorithms, autoplay, infinite scroll, and notifications aren’t neutral “speech,” which would be protected by Section 230, but rather product mechanisms that drive compulsive use and worsen mental-health outcomes. Section 230 has long shielded platforms from liability for user-generated content. This case argues that shield shouldn't extend to the product features that determine how content reaches users.

If you’re interested in better understanding the case, we found the Bloomberg Law Podcast’s episode especially helpful.

Meta halts use of AI characters for teens

In a January 23rd blog post, Meta announced that they will no longer allow teens to access AI characters as they build “a new version of AI characters, to give people an even better experience.” The move follows growing concern about AI companion apps and their effects on young users, particularly around emotional dependency and social displacement. Meta did not offer an explanation for the sudden reversal, however. Teens will still be able to use Meta’s AI assistant.

Takes

Reflections on Taming Big Tech

The Niskanen Center published four essays on why Big Tech has proven so difficult to tame, and how a political movement could rise to the challenge. Each draws on historical comparisons to past social movements and technological upheaval. What’s most interesting, though, is where those analogies might fall apart.

Christopher Allbritton describes a “flywheel” effect, where companies grow by offering something genuinely valuable to users, before exploiting users for profit, then bankrolling the next company that users jump to. He worries we’re not equipped to address the modern version:

But what if the flywheel’s velocity has changed the math? Maybe the cycle now spins fast enough to outrun patient preparation. Maybe the platforms now so thoroughly control the online equivalents of union halls, where organizing might happen, that we can never quite prepare the ground.

If platforms control the very spaces where organizing against them would happen, how do you build a counter-movement?

Adam Garfinkle argues that digital addiction is less dramatic but more insidious than traditional vices:

for any practical purpose, all the elements of cyberaddictions are packed into an individual’s headspace, making them more insidious than conventional addictions even as they tend to be both less dramatic, less unhealthy in a manifest bodily sense, and — again — much less socially anomalous.

A new VICE documentary takes on sports betting

In their new documentary, Out of Bounds: The Sports Betting Boom, VICE examines sports betting’s rise over the last decade. Some of our highlights:

• 0:47:34: A particularly poignant moment from one of the three ASU students at the center of the documentary.

• 0:54:48: on how sports betting companies rely on big losers as from a very small number of consumers.

• 1:22:12: on sports betting as a potential stepping stone to online casinos.

What else we’re reading

• How to Bet on (Literally) Anything - New York Times

• The sole federal regulator over prediction markets says it’s easing off - Business Insider

• FanDuel Introduces “Play with a Plan:” A Research-Based Approach to Responsible Gaming - FanDuel

• The App stores should remove online gambling apps - Recursive Adaptation

• Which Young Men Are “All In” On Crypto? - Young Men Research Initiative

• Pornhub Will Block New UK Users Starting Next Week to Protest ‘Flawed’ ID Law - WIRED

• Kalshi in court over 19 federal lawsuits. What's the future of prediction markets? - NPR

Events & Funding Opportunities

• *New* Friendship in the Screen Age: What is it, and How is it Changing? | February 12, 2026 | Online

• International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking | Las Vegas, NV | May 26-28, 2026

• National Conference on Gambling Addiction & Responsible Gambling | Nashville, TN | July 22-24, 2026 | Call for presentations closed.

What did we miss this week? Do you have an upcoming conference or study we could feature in the next edition? Do you have a take on how to approach regulating big tech? Let us know at bmonline@substack.com, or shoot me a message here.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to stay up to date on Boys & Men Online.

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Sports Betting’s Rapid Expansion

Eight years ago, sports betting was effectively illegal outside Nevada. Today, Americans legally wager more than $150 billion annually, mostly on their phones.

Emerging evidence links legalization and frictionless mobile gambling to reduced savings and increased financial distress, with larger effects among young men and financially vulnerable households. Public attitudes are shifting: 43% of Americans now say legal sports betting is bad for society, up from 34% in 2022. The shift is sharpest among young men, rising from 22% to 47% over the same period, according to Pew.

So what should be done?

Beyond the Binary

The debate has split into two camps.

Industry proponents argue that legalization generates tax revenue, entertains users, and engages sports fans. It brings gambling aboveboard, away from bookies and unregulated offshore operators who don’t pay taxes or protect consumers. Advocates don’t deny that some people are harmed but promote “responsible gambling” tools that let bettors set limits and seek help when needed.

Critics see social costs that outweigh any benefits. A casino in every pocket has fueled compulsive gambling and financial distress, primarily among young men, while pervasive advertising has normalized the activity. Responsible gambling tools, they argue, are ineffective window dressing compared to the addictive design and 24/7 allure of modern sports betting apps. Many would prefer an outright ban.

Both sides have elements of truth. Prohibition would push users towards unregulated, more dangerous alternatives. Yet responsible gambling tools are rarely used and only address harm after it occurs.

The core problem is misaligned incentives. States and sportsbooks both benefit when user losses increase, prioritizing revenue over public health. Competition drives operators toward ever more engaging products and VIP schemes, optimized to extract more from the heavy bettors who generate the vast majority of industry profits.

The path forward isn’t prohibition or the status quo. A more effective approach would establish friction points that slow dangerous patterns before they develop and guardrails that prevent the worst outcomes. We recently published a nine-part policy framework to lay out the building blocks of a sensible reform agenda. Here’s the distilled version:

Approaches to Reducing Harm

1. Voluntary self-control tools

Most responsible gambling tools are opt-in, and rarely used. Ensuring users are in control of their own play means building in friction before gambling starts, not after problems emerge. Deposit limits, maximum bet amounts, and session time-outs all become more effective when they’re on by default, so users can regulate themselves from the start.

2. Loss limits and affordability checks

A small share of bettors account for the vast majority of sportsbook revenue, and the vast majority of harm. Preventing catastrophic losses is the most direct way to reduce extreme financial distress. Regulations such as affordability checks for customers depositing large amounts can curtail damage before it spirals.

3. Safe platform design

Sportsbooks deploy the same design principles as social media and other tech platforms—reduced friction, variable rewards, push notifications, misleading design—all of which increase compulsive use, particularly among vulnerable users. Making legal platforms meaningfully safer than black market alternatives means regulating these features, such as by mandating separate wallets for sports betting and casino play, and banning reverse withdrawals.

4. Limits on bet types

Not all bets carry equal risk. In-play wagering, micro-bets on individual plays, and same-game parlays are the fastest-growing categories, and each carries unique risks for problem gambling. More research is needed to understand the effects of different bet types to prevent users from gambling out of compulsion instead of entertainment.

5. Limits on marketing

Gambling ads saturate sports broadcasts, normalizing the activity and fueling escalation—especially among young viewers. Promotional offers increase uptake among non-gamblers and relapse among those trying to quit. Restricting advertising that reaches youth and eliminating misleading framing are straightforward ways to minimize harm.

6. Responsible personalization

Sportsbooks have the behavioral data to detect problem gambling. But they can use it to maximize extraction. Algorithmic targeting designed to increase betting intensity should be prohibited; VIP programs that reward heavy losses should be restricted.

7. Tax rates that cover public costs

States currently earmark just 1 to 3% of sports betting revenue for prevention and treatment, far less than the public costs gambling generates. Effective regulation requires funding for treatment, enforcement, and independent research. Setting differential rates by product risk and dedicating more revenue towards specific goals are two ways to close that gap.

8. Information and awareness

Education alone won’t eliminate high-risk behavior, but combined with increased transparency, it can help bettors recognize warning signs before they escalate. Gambling literacy programs, standardized account statements showing net losses, and public dashboards tracking industry-wide patterns would give bettors and policymakers the information they currently lack.

9. Protecting sports and athletes

Betting-related harassment of athletes is widespread, integrity scandals have increased, and gambling has become nearly inescapable from the viewing experience. Banning player prop bets for college athletes, excluding users who harass players, and offering gambling-free broadcast options are all ways to preserve what draws people to sports in the first place.

The Policy Window is Open

Politicians across the aisle are souring on the status quo. For instance, Ohio’s Republican governor has publicly said he regrets signing the state’s sports betting bill, while Massachusetts Democrats have proposed serious consumer protections.

Young men are at the center of this story, as the heaviest users and the most financially harmed. The challenge for policymakers is to preserve consumer choice and recreation while reducing financial distress and harm. These nine approaches are a starting point.

Read the full report: Sensible sports betting: A policy framework

Please join us on Friday, February 5, at 1 pm ET for a discussion of the key policy issues, legal challenges, and industry trends shaping sports betting in 2026. We’ll be joined by Brianne Doura-Schawohl of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, of , and of Eilers & Krejcik Gaming.

Register here.

Over the past few months, we’ve seen a useful correction to the discourse about the so-called male loneliness epidemic.

My colleagues Isaac Bledsoe and Ben Smith found that social isolation has increased among both men and women. In most surveys, young women actually report slightly more loneliness than young men.

notes that “the actual crisis of disconnection in America falls largely on the shoulders of men without college degrees.”

The statistical explanation is straightforward: Americans without degrees are significantly less connected to friends and community than their college-educated peers, and the vast majority of Americans without degrees are men.

at found that while men are indeed experiencing loneliness and social isolation, it’s young women under 30 who may be suffering the most, despite hardly any coverage of a female loneliness crisis.

Men and women both feel disconnected; the solutions may be different

The lesson here isn’t to ignore male disconnection. We ought to address disconnection for everyone, but how we cultivate social connection for boys and men may differ from what works for girls and women.

Kate Murphy is the author of the new book, Why We Click: The Emerging Science of Interpersonal Synchrony. In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why the “loneliness epidemic” should be reframed as a challenge of connectedness

• How men and women tend to seek and sustain social connections differently

• Why simply telling men to “be more vulnerable” won’t necessarily lead to more or better friendships

• But removing earbuds at the gym just might

• The positive and negative effects of technology on our social lives

• What it would look like to build a pro-connection society

In an upcoming post, we’ll share some ideas for addressing male disconnection specifically. We’d love to hear yours, too.

It’s sports betting week at Boys & Men Online!

With support from Arnold Ventures, we launched a new Sports Betting Research Hub to curate research, track policy as it develops, and connect experts working on the issue. And we’re excited to announce it be led by the newest addition to our team: Jonathan D. Cohen!

To coincide with the launch, we’ve published a policy paper outlining the state of sports betting in America and exploring different regulatory approaches. My favorite bits are the typology of bettors (recreational, at-risk, and high-risk) and the menu of regulatory policies; I found both especially helpful for thinking clearly about tradeoffs.

Finally, please join us on February 5th at 1 pm ET for an online conversation with Steve Ruddock, Brianne Doura-Schawohl, and Chris Grove to discuss the key policy issues that will shape sports betting in 2026. RSVP here.

In our next edition, we’ll be back to our broader focus. See you then!

The Feed

Findings

Men aged 25-34 driving prediction market growth

A recent Ipsos survey found that a whopping 64% of men ages 25-34 have used a prediction market like Kalshi multiple times in the past week, dwarfing the 17% of men in the age group below (18-24). At the same time, similar shares of the two age groups engage in traditional online sports betting: 41% for 18-24 and 37% for 25-34. This is surprising as some analysts have suggested 18–20-year-olds—who are too young for traditional gambling in most states—are the drivers of skyrocketing trading volumes on prediction markets.

We’re genuinely a little surprised by this gap (and the size of it). If you have any theories, let us know!

Sports Betting and intimate partner violence?

After Miami’s surprise win over Ohio in the CFP quarterfinals, I kept thinking back to a widely circulated working paper by Matsuzawa and Arnesen showing that legal sports betting amplifies a known effect—that unexpected losses trigger spikes in intimate partner violence (IPV). The paper got a lot of coverage for establishing the a consensus that increased domestic violence is another harmful impact of gambling legalization.

But I’ve been (tentatively) convinced this might not be the right conclusion. Another working paper by Walker and Evans shows that—at least according to the original paper’s data—legal sports betting also decreases intimate partner violence when the home team is expected to win and then does win.

Figure 1: the relationship between game outcome and IPV, by sports betting legality, surrounding games where the home team was expected to win.

It’s not entirely clear what this nets out to; it’s possible that—because upset losses are comparatively rare—legalization might even decrease intimate partner violence overall.

From our DMs:

Matt Brown’s paper is one of our favorites; with some creative study design, he shows that bettors are systematically overoptimistic about their expected returns.

Policy & News

Senators urge CDC to look at sports betting

Last week, a bipartisan group of five senators led by Katie Britt (R-AL) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) penned a letter urging the CDC to study how sports gambling’s rapid rise is affecting teens and young adults. In particular, they asked the agency to incorporate questions about gambling into their Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey.

Kalshi barred from sports-related event contracts in Massachusetts

A Massachusetts judge said he will issue a preliminary injunction that would bar Kalshi from offering sports-related “event contracts” in the state. The ruling noted design similarities between Kalshi and traditional digital gambling, including “continuous feedback and engagement loops that are modeled after operant conditioning and slot machine dynamics, leaderboard rankings, and countdown clocks.”

Takes

A new book on the rise of sports gambling

Journalist Danny Funt’s Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling was released Tuesday, alongside a Vanity Fair excerpt. Based on that preview, we’re especially eager to hear Funt pull back the curtain on how betting companies are handling (or not handling) “responsible gaming” behind the scenes.

What else we’re reading

• All Bets Are On: The Rise of Prediction Markets - NYT

• Key Wall Street Regulator Grapples With Crypto, Sports Gambling - Bloomberg

• DraftKings Predictions Reviewed: It’s A Sportsbook App Playing Prediction Market - InGame

• Wall Street groups hire traders to wade into prediction markets - Financial Times

• Truist: Sports Predictions Have Limited Impact On Sportsbooks - Legal Sports Report

Events & Funding Opportunities

• FTC Workshop on Age Verification Technologies | DC | Jan 28, 2026

• International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking | Las Vegas, NV | May 26-28, 2026 | Call for abstracts closes January 23rd.

• National Conference on Gambling Addiction & Responsible Gambling | Nashville, TN | July 22-24, 2026 | Call for presentations closed.

What did we miss this week? Do you have an upcoming conference or study we could feature in the next edition? Are you a sports betting researcher looking to chat about your working paper? Let us know at bmonline@substack.com, or shoot me a message here.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to stay up to date on Boys & Men Online.

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This past week, I found myself at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Philadelphia. Across hundreds of talks and panels, I counted just one session on sports betting (shoutout to Matthew Brown’s “Do Sports Bettors Need Consumer Protection?”) and none on pornography, AI companions, or gaming (never mind digital addiction more broadly).

This got me thinking about the sort of questions I’d like to see economists tackle at next year’s meeting. Here’s my wishlist:

• What does problem gambling look like over time? What are the different pathways into problematic use?

• How do young NEETs—those not in education, employment, or training—spend their time online? Is it mostly gaming? Infinite scrolling? Or something else entirely?

• Do the psychological factors that predict parasocial behavior also associate with the use of AI companions?

• In a recent NYT op-ed, Julia Angwin described switching her iPhone to greyscale as if “an invisible cord had been severed.” What would happen if you made people switch? Would usage fall? Or would they adapt? And would any effects persist once greyscaling was turned off?

2026 is stacking up to be a big year for policy in our areas of focus—more on that below—and we’re hoping that (with your help) it’ll be a big year for research, too.

The Feed

Findings

Longitudinal evidence for the social transmission of problem gambling

A new longitudinal study tracking Finnish adults over eight waves examines the social transmission of problem gambling. When someone begins reporting that a family member has a gambling problem, their own gambling-problem score rises slightly. Strong family relationships (but not friendships) appear to diminish this effect.

Connections → Similarly, there’s evidence in the pornography literature that some “traditional” predictors—puberty and parental style—matter partly because they shape peer environments. Teens surrounded by peers who use porn are more likely to end up on higher-use trajectories (especially boys).

Girls on TikTok, boys on YouTube

A recent Pew survey finds that 24% of teen girls report using TikTok “almost constantly,” compared with 17% of boys; the pattern flips on YouTube, where 20% of boys (vs. 13% of girls) report near-constant use. The survey also reports substantial racial differences, with 37% of black teens reporting near-constant use versus 10% of white teens.

Policy & News

The Verge overviews the tech laws of 2026

The Verge published a useful roundup of tech laws scheduled to take effect in 2026 (barring legal challenges). If you’re tracking state-by-state policy changes, it’s a helpful summary.

Virginia social media time limits come into effect

As of January 1st, a Virginia law came into effect requiring social media platforms to use “commercially reasonable” age checks and default anyone under 16 to one hour per day, per app (unless a parent provides consent). Whether it actually will be enforced depends on Virginia’s Attorney General and the outcome of a pending federal lawsuit.

Mental health warnings for infinite feeds in NY

In late December, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a bill requiring social media platforms to show unskippable mental-health warning labels to young users when they encounter “addictive” features like autoplay and infinite scroll. California lawmakers have proposed a similar bill.

From our DMs:

Takes

Reviewing the evidence on gaming for young boys

This recent article in Parents provides a helpful overview of the evidence on video games for boys, discussing the potential benefits (friends, socialization) and risks (addiction, exposure to predatory behavior).

Still, I’m hesitant to say anything about the effects of “video games” as a unified category. There are important differences between playing together versus alone, and evidence that some types of games (in particular, action video games) may have special benefits for cognitive development.

What else we’re reading

• In 2026, We Are Friction-Maxxing - Kathryn Jezer-Morton in The Cut

• China issues draft rules to regulate AI with human-like interaction - Reuters

• 74 suicide warnings and 243 mentions of hanging: What ChatGPT said to a suicidal teen - The Washington Post

• One more night in a ‘sober house’ for sports bettors - The Washington Post

• Prediction Markets and the ‘Suckerifcation’ Crisis, With Max Read - The Atlantic

• Prediction markets are booming. How to tax winnings is anyone’s guess - CNBC

• 5 Ways The Prediction Market Experiment Ends -

• Everything is gambling now — The Vergecast

Events & Funding Opportunities

• FTC Workshop on Age Verification Technologies | DC | Jan 28, 2026

• International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking | Las Vegas, NV | May 26-28, 2026 | Call for abstracts closes January 23rd.

• National Conference on Gambling Addiction & Responsible Gambling | Nashville, TN | July 22-24, 2026 | Call for presentations closed.

• *New* Young Futures Awards Nomination | Nominate someone who is “driving youth wellbeing in a tech-filled world.” | Closes January 21st.

What did we miss this week? Do you have an upcoming conference or study we could feature in the next edition? Are you a researcher studying how NEETs spend their time online? Let us know at bmonline@substack.com, or shoot me a message here.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to stay up to date on Boys & Men Online.

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In the years since, Pew surveys have consistently found that nearly half of U.S. teens report being online “almost constantly.” Mental health diagnoses have outpaced the growth of service providers. And rates of loneliness and isolation have increased, especially for young people. More than a third of men say they do not feel meaningfully part of any group or community. When asked who or what they think contributes to loneliness in America, technology tops the list.

Into that context comes a new kind of relationship: AI companions designed to provide emotionally-tailored support and simulate reciprocal relationships. According to a new report we commissioned from behavioralist :

• Roughly three in four U.S. teens have used an AI companion

• About half are now regular users

• One in five say they spend as much or more time with AI companions as with human friends

• Among top AI apps, a notable share are AI companions, not productivity apps

Our new report explains what that shift means for boys and young men in particular, at a moment when friendship networks are thinning, loneliness is widespread and in-person emotional support is stretched. AI companions function less like digital assistants and more like digital painkillers, capable of providing relief from loneliness, but also of producing dependence and delaying the development of coping skills.

I hope you enjoy this edited version of our Substack Live conversation in which we discuss:

• The similarities between the emotional tactics of AI companions and romance scammers

• The promise of AI companions to build up our social skills, confidence, and self-awareness

• The risk of AI companions displacing our human relationships and financially exploiting our emotional vulnerability

• The current market incentives — and a possible regulatory framework — to incentivize the design of AI companions for emotional wellbeing rather than dependency and displacement.

I encourage you to read Rupert’s full commentary on the AIBM website and the extended report for further analysis of the evidence gaps to fill.

Thanks to , , , and many others for tuning in live. As a reminder, you can subscribe to our podcast feed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you feed your queue.

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Everyone’s looking back at 2025, including the dictionaries.

Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is “slop”, or “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” The Cambridge Dictionary went in a similar direction, choosing “parasocial.”

Both are illusory—an illusion of genuine content, made by humans, and an illusion of genuine relationships, built on mutualism and reciprocity. The “para” in parasocial refers to just this; in the 1956 paper, which coined the term, Donald Horton and Richard Wohl describe a parasocial interaction as “a simulacrum of conversational give and take.”

While they understood parasocial relations as “one-sided… and not susceptible of mutual development,” today’s AI companions are spookily adaptive to our interests.

Later today, we’ll discuss this and more on Substack Live with behavioral scientist Rupert Gill, whose new commentary examines the risks and possibilities of AI companions. RSVP here.

And in case you missed it, yesterday we published an analysis of four different approaches to regulating high-risk technologies like AI companions. “The central question,” David writes, “is not whether we regulate, but how, when, and with what kind of evidence.”

We hope you enjoy today’s digest and the last CTRL Agency for 2025—we’ll catch you in the new year!

The Feed

Findings

Young people taking risks, buying meme stocks

A recent whitepaper by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) finds that 62% of young Americans feel that they need to take risks in their investments to reach their financial goals. The report also found that 16% of men (vs. 9% of women) have purchased a meme stock, consistent with prior research looking at who participates in meme investment frenzies.

More evidence that loot boxes predict problem gambling

In the last edition of CTRL Agency, we highlighted a longitudinal study showing that gambling-like elements like loot boxes predict future real-money gambling; the next day, a large-scale cross-sectional study of Italian students (ages 15-19) in Lancet bolstered the case that its loot boxes, not just gaming, that tracks harms: teens spending more than €5/month on loot boxes had almost 5 times higher odds of problem gambling.

Policy & News

Should we stop talking about sex addiction?

Last month, the editors of The Journal of Sexual and Relationship Therapy recommended that clinicians abandon the concepts of ‘sex addiction’ and ‘porn addiction’, as “concepts that lack sufficient scientific evidence”. They also insisted that the term ‘compulsive sexual behavior disorder’ (CSBD) only be used when all ICD-11 criteria are met (A 2024 study shows that half of clinicians would diagnose CSBD even in cases where there is no evidence of loss of control—one of the ICD-11 criteria).

From our DMs:

Sexual addiction 25 years on (Grubbs et al., 2020) maps the ongoing debate among researchers and clinicians over “sex addiction” and “porn addiction,” against the backdrop of increasingly ubiquitous online pornography and a rapidly growing research literature.

The New York Times on crypto casinos

A recent New York Times investigation takes aim at the streamers and celebrities making millions promoting crypto casinos, hitting many of the same notes as a recent video essay by YouTuber Coffeezilla. The piece draws similar conclusions—especially around how many affiliate creators are nihilistically aware of the harm they’re contributing to.

A Social Finance report found that children and young people who follow gambling content-creators are 20x more likely to participate in high-risk investment activities like crypto trading. Still, we’d like to know more about the causal mechanisms at play here: what are the pipelines into crypto casinos?

Takes

The ‘Parent Test’ for prediction markets

Referencing the debate about whether prediction markets are a form of betting, Dustin Gouker offers a simple test: “What would you tell your kids about prediction markets, if you had to have a conversation about it? If you’re telling them that what’s happening at prediction markets isn’t betting in any way, shape or form, I’d argue that you’re lying to them.”

What else we’re reading

• Trump signs AI executive order pushing to ban state laws - The Verge

• America’s Betting Craze Has Spread to Its News Networks - The New Yorker

• NFL expresses concern to Congress over rise of prediction markets - ESPN

• College campuses have become a front line in America’s sports-betting boom - The Economist

• Porn Is Poisoning Our Culture - City Journal

• Americans Increasingly Say Sports Betting Is Bad for the U.S. - Morning Consult

• Poll shows Americans’ growing concern over influence of sports gambling - Washington Post

• Pornhub’s 2025 Year in Review

Events & Funding Opportunities

• FTC Workshop on Age Verification Technologies | DC | Jan 28, 2026

• International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking | Las Vegas, NV | May 26-28, 2026 | Call for abstracts closes January 23rd.

• National Conference on Gambling Addiction & Responsible Gambling | Nashville, TN | July 22-24, 2026 | Call for presentations closed.

What did we miss this week? Do you have an upcoming conference or study we could feature in the next edition? Are you a researcher studying pathways into crypto casino usage? Let us know at bmonline@substack.com, or shoot me a message here.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to stay up to date on Boys & Men Online.

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This tension between desiring freedom while recognizing harm has led to a debate at the extremes. One camp says, “Leave it to personal responsibility.” Another says, “Ban it all.”

Both extremes have surfaced this past month. President Trump’s December 11 executive order argues AI firms must be “free to innovate without cumbersome regulation,” while Senator Josh Hawley’s proposed GUARD Act would ban AI companions for minors.

But most of us are in the middle, sensing that neither shrugging it off nor banning it all is the right solution.

So here is a practical framework of four approaches to regulating high-risk online technologies that may provide some benefit and entertainment in moderation, but at the risk of compulsive use and harm. (For instance, online gambling, pornography, AI companions, and short-form video.) As you’ll see, I have a favorite approach among the four to generate evidence and incentivize design for wellbeing. Throughout this essay, I’ll mostly use AI companions to illustrate what an FDA-like precautionary approach could look like.

Stepping back from AI companions, though, there is a time and place for each approach.

After thirty-five years of the World Wide Web, there is a growing global consensus that we’re coming to “a definitive end to the internet’s laissez-faire era,” as Alan Z. Rozenshtein wrote in The Atlantic.

The central question is not whether we regulate, but how, when, and with what kind of evidence.

Immunity and exemption from liability

Section 230 is the cornerstone of legal immunity to technology companies. Without it, the early internet might have drowned in litigation instead of fueling a $2.6 trillion digital economy that now represents roughly 10 percent of US GDP. But thirty years later, the world’s most powerful companies have few incentives to design for our well-being.

Proponents of exemption argue we ought to tolerate some harm in exchange for more innovation and speech. That may be a reasonable bargain for a limited period of time, and there is danger in the pendulum swinging into the over-regulation of speech and amplification.

But without longer-term safeguards, we’ve normalized the development of products intentionally optimized for compulsion, outrage, and emotional dependency. AI is now set to super-charge that optimization.

Prohibition and bans

At the other extreme is prohibition. These advocates argue that some products or services are too risky to allow at all. Australia has banned social media for under-16s, with Denmark, Norway, Malaysia, and New Zealand looking to follow their lead.

China and Vietnam have caps and curfews on video games. South Korea did, too, until it proved too easy to circumvent and was overturned in 2021.

Cambodia, Albania, and India all banned online gambling after having legalized it.

Bans convey moral seriousness during a period of perceived spiritual crisis and social instability. And they can be justified when the expected harm is high, the user is vulnerable, and the product’s benefits are minimal. For instance, more than 80% of Brits support banning nudification apps and 84% of Americans would ban non-consensual deepfake porn.

But bans also have a long history of leading to evasion, uneven enforcement, substitution to the black market, and the rise of organized crime. For instance, criminalizing sex work increased sexually transmitted diseases in Indonesia and was associated with higher rates of sexual crimes in Europe. Similarly, restricting access to porn sites in the UK may drive users to more extreme content.

In retrospect, blanket bans are often rushed through in the midst of a moral panic. Even when justified, prohibition is a blunt instrument and should be treated as such.

Liability and litigation

Between the extremes of immunity and prohibition lie two middle paths. The first is a legalistic approach that sues for damages when products cause harm. “Litigation is the lowest-cost regulator for AI, forcing companies to internalize the costs of their product,” writes Civil rights attorney .

Character.ai, for instance, has faced lawsuits alleging severe harms involving minors, including wrongful death. Legal advocates hope that liability is a strong incentive for responsible design. Companies that profit from risky platforms should face consequences when those risks materialize.

There’s an appeal to this approach. It doesn’t require the state to predict every harm in advance. It preserves innovation. And it uses the justice system to sort out negligence, intent, and damages. Using the analogy of tobacco, Bryce Bennett argues that product-liability lawsuits in the 1980s–90s ultimately forced tobacco companies to internalize the costs of harm, and prompted changes like warning labels and advertising restrictions.

But litigation is reactive. It arms lawyers to address harms after they happen. It’s expensive, slow, and a wildly inefficient way to generate evidence.

Cases can take years and are often settled without public clarity about what actually occurred. Even when plaintiffs win, we typically learn little about the design choices that caused harm or how to prevent them systematically.

The scientific path: evidence before scale

The second middle path is scientific, requiring rigorous evidence of safety and benefit before mass adoption.

The FDA already has a clinical testing process for “Software as a Medical Device” that has authorized products like:

• NightWare, an Apple Watch app that detects nightmares

• MamaLift, a smartphone app for postpartum depression

• RelieVRx, a VR app to reduce chronic lower back pain

If you’re thinking that these FDA-cleared apps seem pretty benign compared to the emotional and social effects of, say, AI companions, I agree.1

But how can we know without rigorous clinical testing?

The point isn’t to treat every online platform like a medical intervention. Rather, it’s to borrow the logic of the FDA model to require evidence about the emotional, social, and financial effects of high-risk online products like gambling, AI companions, social media, and pornography before permitting mass adoption.

Maybe the FDA isn’t the right agency. Maybe it’s the FTC, or perhaps we need a new agency designed from first principles and led by the country’s best technology researchers.

Any FDA-like approval process would generate dueling criticism that the process doesn’t do enough to ensure user safety — or that it’s too burdensome and costly for innovative startups. We saw similar, dueling narratives during COVID — that the FDA moved either too slow or too fast.

Andrew Tutt’s call for “An FDA for Algorithms” argues that lawsuits will always be years behind technological innovation. By the time the Character.ai lawsuits resolve, AI companion products will look and act fundamentally different. Tutt emphasizes the importance of matching regulation to risk. Low-risk apps might flourish under immunity, medium-risk under warnings and liability, and only the highest risk demand pre-approval. Establishing safety thresholds could help minimize bans while encouraging ethical innovation.

Consider two plausible futures of AI companions. A company like Yana.ai might help users build emotional self-awareness and social confidence. Another version, like BetHog’s flirtatious AI blackjack dealers, might manipulate young men’s loneliness, sexual desire, and risk-taking to deepen problem gambling.

Today’s calls for bans and exemptions treat Yana and BetHog as the same product.

A scientific approach, by contrast, generates causal evidence based on pre-specified outcomes. It creates an incentive for companies to prove that they enhance well-being, not compulsive use. And it equips researchers and regulators with tools to prevent harms in the first place.

, a former Facebook employee and now Managing Director of the Psychology of Technology Institute, offers a useful analogy: “We don’t make home builders responsible for every fire,” he writes, “but we do expect them to follow building codes.”

It’s not a binary choice between liability and evidence. Users should still be able to sue for harms after a product is authorized. Still, we should expect far fewer harms (and lawsuits) if high-risk platforms must first demonstrate their safety and benefits with credible evidence.

So what should we do?

• Keep strong speech protections for low-risk contexts, where user choice is real and harms are limited.

• Use bans sparingly, targeting minors and harm without benefit like nudification apps.

• Allow legal liability as a backstop, especially when companies ignore known risks.

• Build an FDA-style evidence pathway for high-risk platforms that affect the emotional, social, and financial well-being of users.

We don’t want to sanitize, moralize, or purify our digital experiences. In a liberal society, we ought to be able to take risks, seek stimulation, and learn from our mistakes.

But we’ve erred on the side of immunity for too long, prompting a pendulum swing to moral panic and calls for blanket bans. With nuance and evidence, online platforms can enhance rather than detract from our desire for fun, purpose, connection, and belonging.

This framework doesn’t eliminate tradeoffs, but it makes them visible.

In high school, I had to read The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel about the unsanitary conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking plants. It sparked public outrage and pushed Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drugs Act, which laid the path to the FDA.

Our online lives aren’t unsanitary, but they are increasingly unsavory. If we don’t want the politics of moral panic, we need the discipline of rigorous evidence.

If you’re interested in learning more and discussing an FDA-style precautionary approach to technology regulation, I hope you’ll join us for tomorrow’s Substack Live conversation with Rupert Gill, who proposes a precautionary approach to regulating AI companions and incentivizing ethical design. You can RSVP here.

Each digest will have three main sections:

1. CTRL Panel – Our latest updates, reflections, hopes, and worries.

2. The Feed – A selection of recent studies, policy developments, and opinion pieces. We’re not trying to capture everything here. We’ll aim to surface the pieces that informed our thinking, and that might change how you think, too.

3. Events & Funding Opportunities – An ongoing list of upcoming events, submission deadlines, fellowships, and funding opportunities.

Occasionally, we’ll share some DMs from friends. This week, we hear from Jonathan D. Cohen, author of Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling.

Let’s dig in.

CTRL Panel

We’ve just put out a new commentary on AI companions by , the former head of behavioral insights at the UK telecommunications regulator Ofcom. Rupert’s report looks at how AI companions might either build or diminish young men’s social and emotional skills. He outlines a research agenda and policy framework to generate more evidence about their impact and avoid repeating the policy mistakes of social media.

We’ll also have a Substack Live with Rupert on December 17th at 2pm ET. Please RSVP here—we hope to see you there!

We’re pleased to welcome our newest student fellow, Bailey Way, who is mapping the evidence of pornography’s impact on men and boys in the United States. We’ll have more to share of Bailey’s work in the coming months.

And if you know a graduate student studying the effects of sports betting, gaming, pornography, or crypto-trading on young men, please encourage them to apply to our fellowship program. Deadline: December 15.

The Feed

Findings:

Young men increasingly favor making porn harder to access

Over the last four years, the percentage of young men who favor making online pornography more difficult to access has risen from 43% to 64%, a clear shift toward tighter restrictions. Age-verification laws offer a template for minors, but would there be support for friction-increasing policies?

Young men have thoughts on gambling regulation

A new poll from the Young Men’s Research Project finds men are more likely than women to have firm opinions about whether gambling should be reined in. They are also more likely to oppose gambling regulations.

Video game “loot boxes” act as a gateway to real-money gambling

Dutch researchers following over 500 young gamers over the course of a year found that engaging with gambling-like elements like loot boxes in video games predicts later real-money gambling. Notably, boys were significantly more likely than girls to engage with gambling-like features and to do so more frequently.

7.4% of young adults meet criteria for Internet Gaming Disorder

A recent systematic review of over 1,000 articles from Addictive Behaviors finds that 7.4% of young adults (ages 18-35) meet the criteria for Internet Gaming Disorder, listed in the DSM-5 as a condition for further study. The authors find a trend toward lower prevalence in samples with a higher proportion of women.

Policy & News

All eyes down under on social media regulation

Today, Australia banned teens age 16 and under from having social media accounts, forcing platforms to police users’ ages or face real penalties. Will cutting off accounts reduce use, or merely shift young Australians to less visible corners of the internet?

Two days in Missouri

On November 30th, Missouri became the 25th state to require porn sites to verify users’ ages; on December 1st, it became the 31st state to allow residents to bet on sports online. Ed Button remarks on X: “The irony of porn sites being banned in Missouri in the name of ‘safety,' the day that sports gambling goes live in the state is not lost on me.”

From our DMs:

Takes

Are problem gamblers the only problem?

Sports betting commentary has focused on a particular horror story—like the relapsed addict who gambled through his wedding day. AIBM Fellow argues we should pay more attention to the vast majority who vacillate between self-control and compulsion. These users might not show up in rehab stories or helpline data, but they vastly outnumber extreme cases, and could amount to most of the aggregate harm.

Connections → could a similar “prevention paradox” be true of porn usage? It’s hard to know, because research and commentary mostly cluster around extreme addiction and harm. But there’s reason to think that the rise of porn could have more diffuse effects, like the normalization of sexual choking.

The big social media experiment is starting. What will young men do?

of Movember asks what Australia’s under-16s will do with their newfound time if they truly stop using social media. He calls for sustained funding for face-to-face and digital social connection programs that understand masculine pressures driving competition and emotional distance. Similarly, an October survey of 1,000 young men from finds high demand for gyms, concert venues, and parks to hang out.

Pay Attention to How You Pay Attention

Ezra Klein examines recent proposals to regulate social media, including school cell phone bans, the Education Not Endless Scrolling Act, and the Kids Off Social Media Act. But are we attempting to address yesterday’s problems as AI remakes the digital experience? Either way, Klein argues: “Absent some view of what human flourishing is, we will have no way to judge whether it is being helped or harmed.”

What else we’re reading

• Smartphone Ownership, Age of Smartphone Acquisition, and Health Outcomes in Early Adolescence - Barzilay et al. in Pediatrics

• Feeds, feelings, and focus: A systematic review and meta-analysis examining the cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use - Nguyen et al. in Psychological Bulletin

• Video Games and Wellbeing: Playing Together Matters - Gallup

• A leading kids’ safety bill has been poison-pilled, supporters say - The Verge

• YouTube’s strengthened approach to online gambling and graphic violence in gaming - Google

Events & Funding Opportunities

• FTC Workshop on Age Verification Technologies | DC | Jan 28, 2026

• International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking | Las Vegas, NV | May 26-28, 2026 | Call for abstracts closes January 23rd.

• National Conference on Gambling Addiction & Responsible Gambling | Nashville, TN | July 22-24, 2026 | Call for presentations closes December 12th.

What did we miss this week? Do you have an upcoming conference or study we could feature in the next edition? Are you a researcher interested in the impacts of increased porn consumption on non-problem users? Let us know at bmonline@substack.com, or shoot me a message here.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to stay up to date on Boys & Men Online.

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We’re excited to explore these issues with you.

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At their best, digital technologies expand our agency, relationships, and sense of purpose like a “bicycle for the mind.” But increasingly, our phones feel more like slot machines; we reach for them not because we choose to, but because we can’t stop.

Technology should strengthen our sense of agency, connection, and fun — not chip away at it. We need better evidence, smarter policy, and a more honest cultural conversation so digital tools help us move toward our aspirational selves.

This new program builds on AIBM’s earlier work, including Poet Larsen’s research on the financial harms of online sports betting, Annie Maheux’s commentary on the social benefits of gaming for boys, and ’s policy analysis of smartphone gambling.

We’re organizing our work around two big themes:

1. Simulations of Mastery & Purpose
   Sports betting, gamified finance, and gambling in video games.

2. Simulations of Connection & Belonging
   Pornography, AI companions, and parasocial relationships

But don’t expect all doom, gloom, and dystopia. We believe technology holds real promise to help boys and men become our best selves … if we design, use, and regulate it with intention.

Our digital lives have undergone significant changes over the past decade, yet the research and policy conversation have not kept pace. This program, and this newsletter, aim to help close that gap.

What this newsletter will cover

We want this space to be fun, conversational, and useful. You can expect regular posts on:

• What we’re learning about sports betting, gaming, pornography, AI companions, and gamified finance

• State and federal policy developments

• Substack Live interviews with researchers, practitioners, and policymakers

• Upcoming conferences, webinars, and funding opportunities

• Commissioned original contributions on how technology shapes the lives of boys and young men

Think of it as a nerdy, curious, and hopefully fun guide to understanding how digital technologies shape the lives of young men. We made a brief video to share our hopes and fears as we get started:

Upcoming: Dec 17th Substack Live with Dr. Rupert Gill

To celebrate the launch, we’re hosting a Substack Live with , a behavioral scientist who led behavioral insights at the UK telecom regulator, Ofcom. Rupert’s new commentary for AIBM examines the rapid rise of AI companions and their social and emotional effects on young men. He’ll share a policy framework for understanding and addressing how AI companions may enhance the emotional and social skills of boys and young men — and when they risk diminishing them.

It should be a fascinating discussion, and I hope you’ll join us — you can RSVP and add a calendar reminder.

Spread the word

If you find this work useful, please share it with friends, colleagues, or anyone interested in how digital technologies are shaping the everyday lives of boys and men. And if you haven’t yet, hit subscribe to stay updated on upcoming editions.

You can also subscribe to our companion podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

Subscribe now

Thanks for being here at the very beginning — there’s a lot to explore together.

Share

In our first episode, and I share our hopes and fears about the project. Thanks for tuning in, and I hope you’ll join us on Wednesday, December 17th, for our first Substack Live with to discuss the emotional and social effects of AI companions on young men. You can RSVP for that conversation here, and we’ll post a recording to the podcast feed a few days later. Thanks for listening and subscribing!

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