By SIMON COLLINS
Teenagers are between four and eight times as likely as adults to have gambling problems, according to a new survey.
The survey of 68 first-year psychology students at Massey University in Albany in 1996, published in the NZ Journal of Psychology last month, found that 18 per cent of
the students were either "problem gamblers" or "probable pathological gamblers" before the age of 20.
In contrast, problem and probable pathological gamblers made up between 2.1 and 3.9 per cent only of a sample of 6452 adults aged 18 and over interviewed by Statistics NZ for Professor Max Abbott at the Auckland University of Technology last year.
And 100 per cent of the psychology students said they had gambled for money before they were 20, whereas only 94 per cent of adults in the Abbott study said they had ever gambled for money.
An author of the teenage study, Massey University psychologist Dr Dave Clarke, said a quarter of the students claimed to have gambled at a New Zealand casino when they were under the legal age of 20, even though the Auckland casino had been open only a few months at the time. "Mainly they did it for the fun of the activity," he said.
Whereas adults said they gambled mainly for money, 46 per cent of the teenagers said they gambled for fun, enjoyment or excitement, only 30 per cent to win or to get rich, and 21 per cent as a social activity.
All three "probable pathological gamblers" in the teenage sample said they gambled as a social activity with relatives or friends.
Those three teenagers gambled about $40 a month on Instant Scratch tickets and from $5 to $40 a month on poker machines. Two of them also spent at least $40 a month on Lotto.
Overall, 82 per cent of the teenagers had bought Scratchies, 69 per cent had bought Lotto tickets, 52 per cent had played the pokies and 35 per cent had bet on horse or dog races.
