CTRL Agency: AIBM/Ipsos Poll shows Americans view prediction markets as gambling
This week's digest on digital technology in the lives of young men.
CTRL Panel
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
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.
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