My College Addiction

It's 2 a.m. I've got an economics exam very early in the morning. I can stay on for just one more tournament. This time I can win. I can feel it. I need to make up for what I lost today. I absolutely have to. Maybe I could buy a new outfit for this weekend or put a little bit of money towards my credit card bill. I can feel it, this is the one. Come on, aces, aces.

I am an addict. And I'm not alone. There is a new addiction plaguing college campuses: online gambling.

Sure, it might not seem as pernicious as other troubling hallmarks of the college experience like binge drinking or unprotected sex. But at least colleges have taken major steps towards educating students to prevent these practices. Condom distribution and hazing prohibitions are measures many universities have taken. But online gambling only takes a credit card or debit card and an Internet connection. Which puts pretty much every college student at risk.

Poker has grown increasingly popular over the last few years. Even ESPN covers the World Series of Poker, which is an annual poker tournament in Las Vegas. Celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker and Ben Affleck can be seen on television playing the game. Who ever thought watching other people play cards would be so entertaining? Natural consumers of popular culture, college students are buying in to the poker phenomenon. And online gambling institutions are listening.

My 2 a.m. pre-econ exam late-night binge is what I call the "gambling me." The reason I don't connect it directly to myself is due to the fact that I never knew I was capable of an addiction. I've never smoked or done drugs and only drink socially. I was the last person in the entire world that I thought could become addicted to anything.

After watching a poker tournament on television I thought that the game looked entertaining. I decided to go online and see if I could play. I really had no clue that you could even access real money tournaments, I just thought I could find the poker equivalent of those minesweeper games that come on your computer. At 19 years old, I did not believe I would be able to access any real gambling programs. However, the process was seamless. What was once a $20 bet "just for fun" became hundreds and then well over a thousand dollars of debt.

College students are picking up on the craze in large numbers, and corporations have been taking notice. Party Poker, one of the largest and best known online gambling institutions, has begun advertising on thefacebook.com. In the ad, college students are hugging each other with the tagline, "Just wanna have fun?" The ad also offers a $50 dollar sign-up bonus to students on Facebook. No company offers that kind of money unless they know they will make it all back and then some. Another site, Absolute Poker, has ads proclaiming, "College Students: Win Your Tuition."

The trend has Ed Looney, the director of the New Jersey Council on Compulsive Gambling, concerned. Looney said, "I've been doing this for 35 years, and I've never seen anything like this Texas Hold 'Em rage. When crack cocaine came out, the phenomenon was similar."

Others, including Senator Charles Schumer of New York, are troubled by the fact that, in practice, there is no age limitation on online gambling because there is no true age identification process. As Senator Schumer said, "These online gambling sites think they have really hit the jackpot by targeting kids." One study found that out of 37 randomly selected online gambling sites, a minor was able to register, play, and pay at 30 of them.

How many college students are actually logging on and playing for cash? The numbers seem to be growing quickly, although firm data is hard to come by. However, there are several indicators that would suggest it is a serious problem. In 2003 online gambling reported $5.5 billion in earnings, which rose from $4.1 billion in 2002. Senator Schumer stated that the problem was so serious that, "Unless we take the necessary steps to eliminate online gambling, more and more of America's young people will be return from college holding a receipt of outstanding debt, instead of a diploma." According to the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania in 2004, 11.4% of in-school male youth reported betting on cards at least once a week. In 2003 only 6.2% had reported the same activity. That makes for an 84% increase within one year.