Surprise! Online Gaming Doesn’t Increase Addiction

I’ve long said that the argument that compulsive gamblers will increase due to the availability of online gaming was highly questionable and now it appears the British government has produced the results to bolster my belief. According to a report published last week, 99.4 Britons were able to enjoy gambling responsibly. Only 0.6% were found to be problem gamblers. Now, this is despite the fact that online gaming is legal (and regulated), legal bookies can be easily found, and the National Lottery is pimped pretty regularly.

What the anti-gaming crowd ignores is that despite these positive findings online gaming could do even more to keep problem gamblers off the tables. Think of all the work that goes into thwarting cheating, bots, and fraud. If the same levels of effort were put into stopping problem gamblers you could even further reduce the number of problem gamblers able to gamble online. The same goes for underage gambling. Using both carrot and stick measures to reward and punish online card rooms for certain types of behavior you could all but eliminate all of the main problems that the anti-gaming folks trumpet so loudly.