CTRL Panel
Kalshi recently announced new protections for under-21 traders: a default deposit limit of $2,500 per month. That still lets a 19-year-old put up to $30,000 a year onto the platform.
My colleague Jon Cohen’s new policy paper—How to Fix Online Gambling—sets the bar a little higher. Among his ten recommendations: no gambling until 21, on prediction markets or anywhere else, and automatic deposit, loss and time limits for bettors under 25 that can’t be switched off.
The Feed
New data on adolescent gambling rates | Rutgers Center for Gambling Studies
Rutgers’ Center for Gambling Studies published a national survey of 1,677 Americans ages 13-27, asking about the prevalence of 21 gambling activities ranging from scratch-off tickets to prediction markets. More than half had gambled in the past year, including 43% of those 17 and under. Prediction markets saw the heaviest weekly play with about 1 in 3 participants betting at least once a week.
Boys love gaming | Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media asked 1,211 Americans 9-17 year olds about how they spend their free time across television, short-form video, gaming, social media, and AI — and how much of it they enjoy. Gaming is where boys stand out: 68% played on the day surveyed versus 43% of girls, and 80% of boys who played reported enjoying it “a lot”. Just 43% of girls who game said the same. For young people, gaming is social: 85% play with other people, and 49% of boys chat or hang out when they play more than half the time (vs. 38% of girls).
Young Americans do not find AI as enjoyable: while 77% had used a chatbot in their free time, just 12% report enjoying it “a lot”.
Are men driven to the manosphere? | Institute for Family Studies
Aaron Renn argues that the way the mainstream talks about young men—one-sided blame, hectoring, lack of empathy—drives them towards the manosphere. He’s right about the conditions (or how men perceive them): a new survey of men under 50 we conducted with Third Way found that 76% agree boys’ and men’s issues aren’t taken seriously. And when asked what happens when boys and men struggle, 47% said people respond mostly with judgement while just 9% said mostly support. But the extent to which men are getting pushed anywhere is less clear (see David’s conversation with Caroline Hayes): Equimundo found that just 18% of men 18-29 report following Andrew Tate, for instance.
What else we’re reading
Reading the Label on AI - A benchmark for flourishing-promoting AI
School Phone Bans and Adolescent Mental Health in Iceland - Bonilla Aparicio et al.
Beyond time spent online: exploring functional motives, discourse-related self-appraisals, and social media addiction-like symptoms - Lehenbauer-Baum et al.
Generation Uncoupled: America’s New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection - Daniel Cox
Online sports betting and the midterms - Ivana Greco
Prediction Markets And Midterms: A Postmortem - Dustin Gouker
Events & Funding Opportunities
Young Futures is accepting nominations for its 2027 YF Awards: unrestricted microgrants for 30+ young leaders and adult champions in the U.S. and U.K. who are making the digital world an easier place to grow up | Deadline: December 11, 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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The finding from your survey with Third Way, that 76 percent of men under 50 feel boys' and men's issues are not taken seriously, and that judgement is reported far more often than support, helps explain why Aaron Renn's point has force even if, as you note, only a minority follow a figure like Tate. I agree that one-sided blame is a poor way to keep young men in the mainstream conversation; they are more likely to listen to people who will also say what is expected of them, self-command, responsibility, and care for others, without treating those expectations as a pathology. The gambling recommendations, particularly automatic limits that a young man cannot simply switch off, seem to me a practical form of that same concern: protecting boys from a market that exploits competitiveness and the fear of falling behind, rather than scolding them for having those drives. I hope the policy paper is read alongside the survey, because the first asks what we should change in the platforms, and the second reminds us what young men think we have already got wrong.
Excellent work as always! I’d love to hear from AIBM on the likely impacts of recent criminal charges against Kalshi coming out of Utah!
https://www.fox13now.com/news/politics/kalshi-prosecution-crackdown-on-prediction-markets-backed-by-governor