The following is excerpted from an online article posted by Relevant
Nevin Burmeister downloaded the app two days after his 18th birthday. Not DraftKings or FanDuel — in Indiana, you have to be 21 to use those. He downloaded Kalshi, a prediction market platform where you can bet on elections, Bitcoin’s hourly price or who wins the Oscars, and where the minimum age is 18. Within six months he had lost more than $2,000.
“Kalshi was my entrance into gambling,” Burmeister said. “Every single dime I had, I lost on that app.”
The reason he could access it at 18 is the reason therapists, addiction researchers and regulators are now paying close attention. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission classifies Kalshi’s wagers as financial instruments, not gambling.
“There’s a strong stigma tied to sports betting, but prediction markets tend to feel more socially acceptable,” said Lin Sternlicht, a therapist and cofounder of Family Addiction Specialist. “Parents aren’t nearly as alarmed when they hear their child is using them. They might say, ‘Oh great, at least he’s paying attention to the news.’”
Gambling addiction mirrors substance abuse disorders structurally — the same reward pathways, the same escalating tolerance, the same compulsion to chase the next hit. The people most at risk, by nearly every metric, are young men under 45, with half earning less than $50,000 a year. The male brain doesn’t fully develop until age 25 to 27, meaning impulse control is still forming exactly when these apps are marketing hardest.
“The apps are designed to look like games,” Gray said. “They make it fun. But what they’re really doing is rewiring your brain to crave that dopamine rush. And once you start chasing it, it’s hard to stop.”
The National Council on Problem Gambling has seen calls to its hotlines surge 45% since legalization. Addiction experts warn the fallout will keep climbing — rising rates of bankruptcy, domestic violence, depression and suicide. Statistically, one in five people struggling with gambling addiction will attempt suicide. Men open secret accounts to hide losses from partners and families.
The industry isn’t built around the people who bet $20 and walk away. It’s built around the ones who can’t stop — and increasingly, those are 18-year-olds who downloaded what looked like a finance app and didn’t understand what it was until it was too late.