The shift happened fast enough to outrun most adult reflexes. By 2023, online bets made up 94% of all sports wagers in the U.S., JAMA Internal Medicine reported in February 2025. Heather Eshleman, director of operations at the Maryland Center for Excellence on Problem Gambling, told AP in November 2025 that digital losses can pile up more quickly than losses in a casino because betting online has less friction.

That friction matters. There is no cash sliding out of a wallet, no drive home, no chance encounter with a neighbor who might say, enough already. A student can place a bet between classes and never look up.

Young people are absorbing the culture around them long before they can legally join it. In April 2025, The Conversation reported that teens can name gambling brands early, recite odds, and run into promotions on TikTok, Snapchat, sports broadcasts, and family television. The same research found many describe betting as part of watching sports, not as a financial decision.

That normalization is part of why the classroom has become an awkward last line of defense. A student may not be able to drink in school once old enough, but classmates can still pull out apps and bet on a big game during the day, The Conversation reported in April 2025. The rules are clearer for alcohol than for online betting, and the phone makes that gap hard to police.

The regulatory picture does not help. A National Council on Problem Gambling audit found wide variation in state gambling protections, with only Connecticut, New Jersey, and Virginia meeting 49 of 82 recommended standards and 11 states meeting fewer than 25, AP reported in September 2024. Schools are being asked to step into the gap because the rest of the system is patchy.

The risks are not identical across age groups, and they are not spread evenly. A Fairleigh Dickinson University survey found that 10% of men ages 18 to 30 showed behavior consistent with a gambling problem, more than three times the 3% rate in the general population, AP reported in September 2024. Researchers tied the elevated risk to online sports betting and online slot machines.

Younger teens are already in the mix. One study cited by The Conversation in April 2025 found that 31% of 12- to 17-year-olds had ever gambled, 6% had done so in the past month, and 8% were at some level of risk for gambling harm. JAMA Pediatrics reported in July 2025 that few large-scale youth studies include thorough gambling assessments, which means current estimates probably miss some of the problem.

Parents are uneasy, too. The same Conversation research found 70% of parents were at least somewhat concerned about gambling risks for their children, with many calling the products highly accessible and in your face. That is not a technical term, but it is hard to improve on.

The warning signs are familiar to anyone who has watched a bad habit take hold: betting during school hours, brushing off losses, hiding app use, chasing losses, or letting gambling crowd out schoolwork, friendships, or basic needs. Public health advocates say those shifts matter more than any one bad weekend.

The obvious skeptical question is simple: why should schools do this job at all? Parents, app companies, and regulators all have a role, and none of them gets to hand off the bill and vanish.

But schools have one advantage the others do not, they still reach nearly everyone. They also reach teens before a gambling pattern hardens into a full-blown problem, which matters because the usual safeguards tend to show up too late. In that sense, classroom instruction is not a cure. It is the least-bad place to start.

That is the criticism of the industry’s favorite answer, “responsible gambling.” FanDuel and DraftKings point to time limits, deposit caps, self-exclusion, hotline numbers, and warning screens as evidence that they are doing something, AP reported in November 2025. The tools exist.

The problem is when they arrive. The Conversation reported in April 2025 that self-exclusion usually happens only after a crisis, fewer than 10% of people who might benefit from treatment seek it, and limit tools do little once a bettor is in “the zone,” the trance-like state high-intensity gambling can create. For teens who have not developed a problem, those tools are mostly irrelevant. For teens who already have, they are late.

That is why some states have started looking at schools. Virginia has enacted a law requiring classes on gambling and its addictive potential. New Jersey and Michigan have pursued similar bills, while Maryland and West Virginia saw measures fail and are expected to try again, AP reported in June 2023.

What advocates want is not generic financial literacy with a gambling example stapled on. They want students to understand how odds are set, what a parlay really costs, how the money line works, and why the house keeps its edge. One anti-gambling advocate quoted by AP in June 2023 argued that students should learn the basic rules before they ever open an account.

That pitch is easier to hear after you listen to people who have already lost the argument with themselves. A man who said he lost more than $700,000 to sports betting over a decade, starting with casual wagers in high school gym class, told AP in June 2023 that earlier education would have made a huge difference. He said he did not see the cycle he was in.

That is where the caveats come in. The case for school-based education is stronger than the evidence base behind it.

The Conversation reported in October 2025 that messages such as “99% of gamblers lose in the long run” ranked well in a study of 4,000 gamblers, and that self-appraisal prompts have reduced gambling in slot-machine studies. But most of that research comes from Australia, not the U.S., and there are no large-scale American trials showing that gambling-specific financial literacy classes in schools actually change behavior.

That matters. Good intentions are easy. Measurable results are harder, and gambling has a way of making people overconfident right up until the moment they are not.

Still, the policy gap is real, and the classroom may be the only place left where someone can interrupt the story before the losses start to feel normal. States have moved faster to legalize sports betting than to teach the arithmetic behind it. That leaves schools trying to do, after the fact, what regulators and platforms have not done well enough on the front end.

For students placing bets between classes, the question is not abstract. It is whether adults notice in time.