Cookies on the Gambling Commission website

The Gambling Commission website uses cookies to make the site work better for you. Some of these cookies are essential to how the site functions and others are optional. Optional cookies help us remember your settings, measure your use of the site and personalise how we communicate with you. Any data collected is anonymised and we do not set optional cookies unless you consent.

Set cookie preferences

You've accepted all cookies. You can change your cookie settings at any time.

Skip to main content

Report

Young People and Gambling 2024: Official statistics

Gambling Commission report produced by Ipsos on young people and their gambling behaviour, attitudes and awareness in 2024.

Contents


Summary

This section covers young people’s active involvement in gambling, based on self-reported experiences of spending their own money on gambling activities in the past 12 months. It includes analysis of the demographic profile of those who reported gambling with their own money over this period.

Findings are compared with previous years of the survey to identify trends. Statistically significant differences are highlighted across the years 2022, 2023 and 2024, though the 2022 sample did not include year 12 pupils or independent schools and so comparisons with this year are indicative only.

Just over a quarter of young people (27 percent) reported having gambled using their own money in the 12 months preceding the survey. Playing arcade gaming machines remained the most frequent gambling activity among 11 to 17 year olds (20 percent had spent their own money on this in the past year). There was no significant change overall in young people’s levels of active gambling since 2023, though there was a statistically significant increase in the proportion of young people actively involved in regulated gambling excluding arcade gaming machines (6 percent in 2024, compared to 4 percent in 2023).

The youth-adapted problem gambling screen: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition – Multiple Response Juvenile (DSM-IV-MR-J) was used to identify gambling behaviours among young people that participated in the survey. A total of 1.5 percent of young people scored 4 or more on the DSM-IV-MR-J, 1.9 percent scored 2 or 3, and 23.2 percent scored 0 or 1. The proportion of young people scoring 4 or more on the DSM-IV-MR-J increased from 0.7 percent in 2023 to 1.5 percent in 2024.

Next section
Definitions
Is this page useful?
Back to top