Is Online Gambling Addictive?
September 30, 2009
With the release of a recent survey that says that online gambling is addictive, the industry is up in arms. It has already been proven that the authors of the study have ulterior motives when it comes to determining whether or not online gambling is addictive. Every other study that has been performed up until now has determined that online gambling on its own is not addictive, so this new study has many questioning what is going on.
Part of the problem is that the authors both have a basis and a stake in seeing that online gambling is illegal within the United Kingdom. One has been trying to keep it illegal for years, while the other fully supports the cause. When you have two men, both of whom do not want to see the online gambling legal, come up with a study that disproves every other study out there, you have to wonder where their facts are coming from.
Up until now every other study has shown that online gambling by itself is not addictive. They studied subjects who had an online gambling addiction, but they all had one thing in common in that they had all started at a land-based casino first. They determined that land-based casinos were in fact a reason why people became addicted to gambling. Those addicts then take that information or that addiction, and transfer it to the Internet.
So, are there online gambling addicts? Absolutely. However they did not get their start by participating in online gambling, they got their start by gambling, period.
