Research paper about technological developments and adolescents Essay

Research paper about technological developments and adolescents gambling - Essay Example In United States and other parts, gambling is on the rise due to activities of gambling and increased acceptability of the routine. This has been due to the promotion of the available government lotteries, media exposure of poker tournaments, and accessibility of internet gambling. This is a significant change from what was there in the past years. However, problems exist in analyzing gambling in adolescents. Even after this weakness, it is necessary to consider gambling behavior in this growth phase due to the prevalence of risk taking behavior in this cohort. This will help in analyzing the extent to which the young gamble, influence of gambling on development, and other social aspects. Additionally, this will help with prevention and intervention strategies at a certain amount of gambling in adolescents. According to Wilber and Potenza (1), gambling is placing something of value at risk anticipating that one will gain something worthy. In adolescents, mostly gambling involves thin gs as flipping cards that eventually translates into problematic areas like sneaking to gamble in casinos. Recent studies have indicated that there are increased rates of gambling by the adolescents (Wilber and Potenza 1). In fact, a review conducted in United States and Canada indicates both a high level of adolescent is involved in gambling activities and increased rate of participation in the last one decade. For example in the united states between 1989 and 2002, the rate of gambling had increased to 65 % as compared to the past when it was hardly at 45% (DF, 24). In Canada, the rate of underage gambling is on the rise. There are key areas that adolescents engage in gambling. The critical areas include government promoted lottery, cards, dice, board games, sports betting, and games requiring skills. However, the actual rate of gambling depends on regions. Factors that affect the rate of participation include accessibility of gambling opportunities like the internet, types of gam bling available to adolescents and the general population (Wilber and Potenza 1). However, in comparisons to adults, adolescent’s gamblers agree to gamble with less money and less often as adults. This is primarily due to money constrains and lack of gambling opportunities. Moreover, they are most likely to engage in strategic gambling such as card games instead of nonstrategic gambling such as use machines (Wilber and Potenza 1). This is probably due to the diminished legal access to casinos and lotteries. Age sometimes limits adolescent’s participation, but it is less likely to eliminate the behavior. There exist challenges in studying gambling behaviors among the youths. This is because the study involves modification of the problem gambling criteria used to describe the behaviors in adults. The definition of problems in adolescents is likely to involve consideration of differences in the adolescent’s roles and responsibilities. However, the rate of adolescen ts gambling is yet to be established in concrete ways due to lack of consensus around definitions of adolescents involvements. The gambling problems include behavior that interfere with individual and have a negative outcome on their life (Wilber and Potenza 1). Statistics shows that the rate of gambling is high in males as compared to females and the gambling proble