Age of gambling onset and resultant gambling behavior during young adulthood in the United States

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Previous research has examined how the age at which an individual first gambles (age of gambling onset) correlates with problematic behavior later in life, such as problematic alcohol or substance use; however, much less is known about how age of gambling onset, particularly as a child or as a young adult, might influence future gambling. We assessed how self-reported age of gambling onset may have shaped more recent gambling and propensity to take risks. Methods: We analyzed questionnaire data and neurocognitive assessment data collected from young adults in the United States (n = 579) and conducted ordinal logistic regression to model our study variables. Results: Upon examining three distinct age categories (under 18, 18–20, 21, and over), we found that earlier age of gambling onset was significantly associated with betting a higher overall proportion during a neurocognitive task. Conclusions and Scientific Significance: Gambling more points on a laboratory-based task was correlated to earlier age of gambling onset. There were no statistically significant associations between age of gambling onset and severity of recent pathological gambling, nor gambling expenditure in the past year, nor gambling frequency in the past week. Future longitudinal study should discern the causality of these findings in both directions and ascertain whether these findings can be extended to older and clinical populations. Future work should explore other variables, such as ethnicity and socioeconomic background, that may be relevant to understanding variations in age of gambling onset and its repercussions.