CTRL Panel
Sydney Sweeney posed provocatively semi-nude in an advertisement for sports gambling on a prediction market platform. While prompting controversy seemed to be the point, the ad scrambled the usual political associations, with several leftist commentators criticizing the use of soft porn to market gambling and some conservatives offering a sex positivity defense.
But does it qualify as porn?
Here’s what we can say for sure: Even among academic researchers, there is little consensus on how to best define or measure pornography.1 I can say this with confidence because, in June, we convened roughly 40 pornography researchers to identify where the evidence supports consensus and where important questions and disagreements remain. A significant portion of that time was devoted to measurement challenges.
Today we published a white paper synthesizing the discussions and disagreements from the meeting — and offering practical recommendations for funders and researchers. We hope it helps strengthen our understanding of one of the most common and least studied online activities.
You can read the executive summary or the full white paper.
The Feed
Researchers surveyed 1,966 US adults every three months for two years about their use of social media and their subjective well-being. They found little evidence that using social technology predicted subsequent happiness or life satisfaction. Their findings add to a growing body of research showing weak associations. In an accompanying Substack post, Kostadin Kushlev and co-authors emphasize what broad measures can miss. They surface three limitations of current studies of social media: 1) surveys don’t account for high-use outliers, where harms may concentrate; 2) broad measures of social media use don’t account for how they are used; 3) reducing social media use produces negative FOMO effects, a collective action problem.
Our ongoing research with NRG and Verb.ai is designed to address the first two limitations by combining surveys and in-depth interviews with observational data of participants’ device usage.
Evidence for social media legislation strategies
Perhaps a better title would have been “little evidence for social media legislation strategies.” A new review in JAMA Network Open examines the evidence behind six approaches to adolescent social-media regulation, including age restrictions, school phone policies, and platform design requirements. The authors find limited evidence about which policies work, for whom, and with what unintended consequences.
But that’s no reason to wait for perfect evidence. The authors recommend a “minimum viable evidence” model: use suggestive evidence to inform protections, embed evaluation from the start, highlight unintended effects, and revise policies as evidence develops.
AIBM’s Jonathan Cohen makes a related argument about Colorado’s sports betting reform bill. The law, signed in June, creates an opportunity to test whether deposit limits and notification restrictions reduce harms.
Gambling problems by gender before and after legal gambling age
This Swedish study surveyed 528 students ages 15–19 at two public high schools. It examined gambling before and after Sweden’s legal gambling age of 18, using a brief screener for possible gambling problems. Among underage students, 20% had used online casinos, 21% had engaged in sports betting, and 25% had gambled for money within video games. 31% of boys screened positive for possible gambling problems versus 4% of girls. Online casinos were most associated with possible gambling problems, followed by gambling in video games and then sports betting. The authors recommend stronger enforcement of age restrictions and greater attention to gambling-like mechanics in video games. The survey cannot establish causation.
Policy
Connecticut targets sports prediction markets and their distribution networks
Connecticut issued cease-and-desist letters to nine platforms, including Polymarket, Robinhood, and Novig, ordering an immediate stop to sports-wager offerings and advertising in the state. It also subpoenaed 29 businesses involved in distribution and payments.
The new law establishes safeguards for companion chatbots used by children, including age verification, risk assessment, crisis responses, and controls addressing emotional dependency. Provisions become operative July 1, 2027.
Earlier this year, we published an insight brief by Dr Rupert Gill to assess the potential impact of AI companions on boys and men amidst the growing policy debate.
What else we’re reading
The Meta settlement won’t fix teen mental health by Jacqueline Nesi, PhD
A breakdown of the teenage digital divide by Ioakim Boutakidis
New £900,000 study of gambling-like mechanics in children’s games
New York secures $8 million from sweepstakes-casino operator VGW
Sports-betting handle is not entertainment spending by Dustin Gouker
What the top Fortnite subreddit tells us about young men’s digital worlds by Equimundo
Events & Funding Opportunities
New: Groundwork / Unwritten Challenge | A $15 million, three-year US/UK initiative includes a first challenge for U.S. nonprofits offering $50,000–$100,000 grants. Inquiries open September 23 and close October 16.
Learned Behavior: How Youth Digital Life Shapes Moral Development | Online | September 17
Family Online Safety Institute Conference | Washington, D.C. | November 19, 2026
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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For a closer look at the boundaries between mainstream social media and adult content, see Revealing Reality’s The OnlyFans funnel, which examines sexualized content and pathways to adult platforms encountered by teenage accounts.
Thanks so much for highlighting!