“There was a study about a month ago showing that a lot of Gen Z viewed sports betting as a legitimate form of investing. They're using that instead of CDs, or T-bills, or savings accounts, or index funds. That means we've missed the boat on financial literacy.”
Chasing Life · Health & Longevity · November 2026
Context
Timothy Fong, who co-directs UCLA's Gambling Studies Program, was describing how young people think about betting and prediction-market apps. He argues these apps are replacing conventional saving and investing for many of them.
Transcript
…that's a little bit of a gray area when you start to say, hey, bring on the family now brought to you by our sports betting company. So again, this is an adult product. It's meant for adults. And yet we popularize and we talk about it like it's meant for everyone from as soon as they were born. So
there's no regulation in terms of, I mean, you said 12 to 30. Year olds is men are who you're most concerned about. But anybody, I mean, even younger than that are using this.
Oh, absolutely. I saw a 14-year-old a couple of months ago who downloaded a prediction market, told an app, told his mom, Hey, I want to do this. Mom thought it was a video game. He started accessing it through her bank account: bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, on the phone, and trading on things like the NBA draft, you know, not even the game. You fast forward six months later, that young man had spent $40,000. So imagine that damaged what it did to him. He's got a lifetime scar. The mother, like, oh my gosh, how could I have done that allowed that? Who's responsible? Who's she going to sue? Gambling is supposed to be entertainment. It's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to bring you closer with your friends and family. It's supposed to give you another boost of dopamine temporarily. It's not supposed to be a job. It's not supposed to be a solution to your emotional problems. And it's not supposed to be a way to get it. I'll give you a quick example. There was a study about a month ago to show that a lot of the Gen…
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We call it sports gambling. Do people who engage in this think of it as gambling?
It's interesting. Some sports bettors say, well, I don't gamble. I bet on sports or I trade. So it's just semantics. I put it all under this umbrella of risky financial activities, whether it's investing, trading, gambling, betting, wagering, playing the lottery, whatever you want to call it. If…
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