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State of Play’s TL;DR
- As sports betting becomes more visible and socially normalized, some schools are moving faster on gambling education.
- Massachusetts is expanding a pilot program aimed at helping teens spot risks, question betting ads and think twice before gambling becomes a habit.
Massachusetts is in the second year of piloting a school-based gambling prevention program created by the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health with support from the state Attorney General’s Youth Sports Betting Safety Coalition.
Sports betting became legal in Massachusetts in 2023, and the curriculum is designed for ages 12 to 20.
The program includes four 45-minute sessions covering myths about sports betting, gambling harms, ways to outsmart betting ads, and basic financial skills. In spring 2025, it reached 445 students across five high schools and three community organizations.
Evaluation results found 70% of students could identify warning signs of problem gambling, 64% said they intended to wait until legal age to gamble, and 78% said they would recommend the program to a peer.
An expanded version is now reaching 2,000 students at 15 high schools and 200 students at five middle schools. As curriculum developer Shekinah Hoffman put it:
“It’s a very hands-on approach.”
Report: 59% of boys said unsolicited ads pop into their feeds
For adult bettors, this is a reminder that the rapid spread of legal wagering comes with a parallel responsible gambling conversation. A Common Sense Media survey cited in the report found about one-third of boys ages 11 to 17 gambled in the last year, with rates rising to around half among 16- and 17-year-olds. Fifty-nine percent of boys said gambling ads were simply showing up in their feeds.
That matters because the normalization of betting does not stop at the legal-age line. Educators and researchers in the report describe a world where sports betting promotions, social media, and mobile apps make gambling feel routine.
Marlene Warner, executive director of the nonprofit Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health, said ads are reaching young people “fast and furious,” while researcher Michael Robb called it a public health concern for kids who engage more deeply.
The report also points to Virginia, which requires problem gambling education in school curriculum after a 2022 bill, and North Carolina, which has funded anti-gambling programs in schools and community organizations since 2010.
What’s next?
The big question is whether pilot programs like Massachusetts’ remain local experiments or become a bigger part of state policy. Open questions include whether lawmakers will require problem gambling prevention in health curriculum and whether the program expands statewide beyond the pilot phase.
For the gambling industry, this looks like an early sign of where the conversation is heading. As legal betting spreads, responsible gambling efforts may increasingly start before a person is old enough to place a legal wager.
Based on reporting by Caralee Adams for The Hechinger Report.
