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Americans are gambling more. This year's March Madness NCAA basketball tournament saw more than $3.3 billion wagered legally. Gambling ads are everywhere. The betting is available right on your phone, an addictive practice brought right to your pocket by an addictive device. NPR Sequoia Carrillo asked experts and parents how to talk to kids before it becomes a problem for them.
SEQUOIA CARRILLO, BYLINE: Linda Uphoff (ph) raised three boys in Dallas. Sports were everything.
LINDA UPHOFF: We gather around sports, whether it's in person watching our kids play, or if it was sitting on the couch watching a ball game. So it was a really big part of our culture.
CARRILLO: And these days, with sports often comes betting.
UPHOFF: And we would have fun with it. You know, it was March Madness practice. It was fantasy football.
CARRILLO: It wasn't until her middle son graduated from college when she started to notice things might be off.
UPHOFF: The first time was when my son asked me to borrow some money.
CARRILLO: He had a good job, but she didn't question it in the moment. She sent the money. Only much later, after her son had borrowed money from his brothers, friends and his parents over and over again, did she realize that he had a problem, and she didn't know how to help.
UPHOFF: I was doing all the wrong things, but out of love. You know, I really, really wanted to help my son. And it wasn't working.
CARRILLO: Americans wagered more than a hundred and sixty-six billion dollars on sports in 2025, according to the American Gaming Association's annual report. So it's no wonder that young adults and teens are joining in legally or otherwise. Uphoff faced a predicament more and more parents are confronting - how do you talk to your kids about gambling?
MATT MISSAR: You're coming in and talking with your teenager about problem gambling, but you're coming in, you know, fire and brimstone. This is the worst thing in the world.
CARRILLO: That's Matt Missar. He's an addiction counselor in Pittsburgh.
MISSAR: Teenagers are going to shut down. They're not going to want to have that conversation.
CARRILLO: Mazar specializes in gambling and video games, and most of his clients are boys and young men. He says parents need to take a beat and avoid a confrontation. Sometimes it's good to let the conversation come to you.
MISSAR: When you're sitting there and a gambling ad pops up, use that as almost an entry point to this conversation. Oh, man, I see these ads all the time. What do you think about them? Do you have any friends that gamble? Have you ever gambled? What do you think about gambling? Just being very curious, very conversational about it.
CARRILLO: Michael Robb is the head of research at Common Sense Media, a nonprofit focused on youth in the digital age. And he recently did a study of 11- to 17-year-old boys about gambling.
MICHAEL ROBB: Lots of kids in our study said they never talked to a parent about it, and I think less than half had any rules in their home regarding betting.
CARRILLO: They found that 36% of the boys surveyed had gambled in the last year, and most of those parents didn't know about it. That's why it's better, he says, to bring it up before you have a reason to bring it up.
ROBB: This works best as an ongoing conversation, not like a one-time warning.
CARRILLO: Starting the conversation is hard, though. Linda Uphoff recalls how badly her initial talk with her son went.
UPHOFF: I came in hot. I came in angry.
CARRILLO: She says she'd do it differently now. Six years after their first conversation, he's been in and out of treatment many times. The experience spurred her to go back to school and understand how to approach a problem like her son's. She's now a licensed addiction counselor and works with patients and parents. Many parents think they can just pay off the debt and move on. But that just makes it worse.
UPHOFF: You got to let the consequences land. You can't fix this. Only they can fix this.
CARRILLO: So just listen to your kid, she says. Don't interrupt, and give them your full attention.
Sequoia Carrillo, NPR News.
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