The National Strategic Assessment 2020 report says that 11% of children surveyed spent some cash on gambling during the last week of 2019. The widespread use of smartphones and the internet create perfect conditions to accelerate the problem among teenagers. Some gambling houses ignore the dangerous trend and provide unobstructed access to their sites without paying too much attention to ID verification. Luckily, Gratorama bitcoin casinos and some other crypto-based gambling resources still check and verify the age of the visitors to protect youngsters from the harmful effect of gambling.

This complex problem should be approached from various angles. Parents and educational institutions should not stay indifferent to the burning problem. Schools or colleagues should treat the issue with utmost care and educate children on how to behave so as not to fall into the gambling trap. Nonetheless, the main (and most effective) way to protect children remains parents. Let’s discuss what each party can do to avert the danger children are exposed to when gambling online.

Secure Online Gambling

Casinos and regulatory institutions are responsible for the technical side of preventing minors from gambling. In the perfect world, they should act jointly, taking away about 80% of the discussed problem. Also, regulators are in charge of developing secure methods and watching if gambling sites implement them correctly.

How Do Gambling Sites Prevent Underage Playing?

Gambling sites have the following instruments to prevent underage from playing on their platforms:

• Pop-up windows to confirm the age of the visitor.
• Registration forms that require official documents (passports).
• Automated KYC procedures to confirm the identity of the customer.
• Prohibition of depositing and playing if the person didn’t complete the above steps.

Regulators and Their Possibilities

Regulators are governmental institutions that try to control the gambling sector. They provide operators with licenses or approve the overseas ones. It allows casinos, betting sites, or poker rooms to legally act in a particular country and pay taxes. Controlling institutions also set the advertising requirements and fine gambling operators for breaking some basic rules. The UK Gambling Commission, for instance, fined an operator $8.2 million for social responsibility failings. So, there is a lot to lose.

Usually, governmental institutions develop and implement the Know Your Customer procedure. It means that legal casinos or bookmakers receive the possibility to automatically check punters' documents without spending their resources on this tricky process. For regulators, this step is also beneficial, as synchronization with gambling sites that use KYC allows detecting problematic gamblers immediately. This is also part of the international Anti-Money Laundering activities that prevent scams, cheating, and illegal money flow.

Unfortunate Reality

Regulators and gambling platforms have huge technical opportunities to prevent minors from gambling. But in reality, most of the countries don't use modern technology options to provide strict KYC and AML steps. Mercenary casinos and bookies facilitate this problem. They make everything possible to overcome restrictions and get as many clients as possible without checking the passport. It imposes much more pressure on parents and educational institutions to fix uncontrolled teenage gambling.

How Parents Can Help

The list of steps that parents can take to avoid child gambling addiction is enormous. Here are some of them:

1. Start with talks. The very first step in managing delicate situations is to discuss them. This, actually, should be done before you've noticed some kind of gambling problem in your child. Depending on the age of the kid, their interests, and character specifics, start with explaining basic things. For instance, why gambling sites exist, how they make money, and why people experience troubles when gambling. If a parent is unsure about the answers to these questions, a few informational articles will help.
2. Become a role model. Yes, that is still one of the most reliable ways of upbringing. Exclude gambling from your habits or don’t let your kids see you being passionate about winnings — children often copy their parents' behavior.
3. Explain the games in more detail. Math can be a helpful tool to persuade youngsters. Lottery win probability, chances of winning, the number of opponents one has to beat in poker tournaments — these are good points to learn to get to know the business from the inside. Make sure that your kids understand what the RNG is so that they understand that gambling is about losing most of the time.
4. Use restrictive tools. That is the last measure one can apply if they notice issues with gambling. There are different applications that block particular websites but are still invisible on the PC or smartphone. However, young hackers can easily recognize this trick. 

Lectures on Preventing Gambling Addiction in Schools and Universities

That's a challenging element due to the complexity of the required resources. First of all, experts in the field should lecture on gambling. It will exclude problems with unexpected questions that can arise in the group of teens during the conversation.

Also, this way of fighting gambling issues should be informative and interesting for youngsters. The following list can be a plan of lectures for a school or college:

• History of gambling: when it appeared, in what forms it existed, and how it evolved.
• The basic psychology of gambling and why it is addictive.
• What is luck, and how to measure it?
• Life of the lottery and poker winners after they won millions.
• Game of chance vs game of skills — what is the difference?
• How to understand if I play responsibly or not? 
• The importance of licensing and differences between jurisdictions.
• Types of scams in gambling and how cheaters try to beat the system?
• Return to player: what it is, how it impacts online casino games, and how regulators check it.
• Economy and finances of gambling sites: investments, launch & operating costs, profits.
• Gambling advertising: specifics, hooks, fakes.

An essential element here is not to persuade students but help them decide for themselves. This will upgrade the level of their consciousness and decrease problematic behavior in this direction.