Teen gambling on the rise in Washington

The 2025 Healthy Youth Survey found one in eight 10th graders had gambled in the past 30 days: more than the number who said they’d used drugs or alcohol.

Many young people who are gambling think they are going to make money, according to Kim Freudenberg, the founder of Parents Standing Together, a nonprofit that raises awareness about the dangers of youth gambling.

“The entire gambling ecosystem is set up so that you lose money, but young people’s brains aren’t fully developed yet, they don’t see that how that works, and they think they’re going to make money from it,” Freudenberg said.

Freudenberg set up the group earlier this year to try to help other families. Her son started gambling in middle school and it continued through college.

“A gambling addiction is not about money, and a lot of people think it’s.. it’s a money problem, and it is not. It is a full-blown mental health crisis problem, and it just feeds off of money. Money is just the drug,” Freudenberg said.

According to the Washington Healthy Youth Survey, the percentage of tenth graders who self-reported that they have gambled in the last 30 days grew from 9% in 2021 to 12.7% in 2025.

“The number of young people that are getting pulled into all these various forms of gambling is really high, and parents don’t know what to do, they don’t see it, they don’t recognize it…” Freudenberg said.

She says young people are making bets on sportsbooking sites and prediction markets, and using financial apps to trade stock like Robinhood.

“(Parents) don’t know the warning signs, they don’t know that you know their Robin Hood app might be gambling. They don’t know about prediction markets. They don’t understand the nature of today’s sports betting,” Freudenberg said.

More information on Parents Standing Together can be found at https://parentsstandingtogether.org/.