Huge numbers of children are gambling online, . Around 25,000 children aged between 11 and 16 meet the definition of a problem gambler, according to a psychological questionnaire. And around 370,000 children in England, Scotland and Wales – 12 per cent of the total – have gambled in the past week.
The most common forms of gambling that children participate in take place in the physical realm, involving fruit machines, scratch cards or just making wagers with friends. Now, however, a type of online gambling called “skin betting” is also taking off, and a regulatory blind spot means children are able to easily take part.
Skins are cosmetic items found in some video games, which can be traded on third-party websites for cash. Some sites also let players gamble their skins to receive a more valuable one. In some cases, this gambling is built directly into the game. For example, during a shoot-’em-up players might have a chance to gamble one of their weapons by spinning a virtual fruit.
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Skins can normally be earned by just playing the game, but there is often also the option to pay with real money for more cracks at winning them. Nearly half of all children in the UK are aware of skin betting and 11 per cent of 11 to 16-year-olds have placed a skin bet.
This shouldn’t be possible: people must be over 18 to gamble in the UK, and licensed gambling websites must verify the ages of all of their customers. Annual reviews can lead to such sites losing their licence if the industry regulator feels that they are not doing a good enough job, so they have an incentive to be rigorous.
But skin-betting platforms don’t have the same requirements. They are not legally obliged to take this matter seriously, says at Trust Elevate, a company focusing on age verification technology.
UK law says that if an item is won by a game of chance and can be considered to have monetary worth then the activity is a form of gambling and should be regulated as such. Normally, this means that winning an item that is only used within a game and can’t be “cashed out” doesn’t constitute gambling. But now that third-party websites allow people to trade skins for real money, the line is easily blurred.
“It no longer makes sense to use formal definitions of what is and is not gambling, when what children experience is a blur of infotainment, celebrity endorsement, free games, risky games, games for money, games for virtual goods, etc,” says at Goldsmiths, University of London.
A quick fix, such as putting skin bets on the same level as other forms of gambling by slapping an age “gate” on certain online games, is likely to have some benefit but won’t stop every instance of underage gambling.
UK gambling laws were last updated in 2005, when rules around the advertising of gambling were relaxed. Since then, children have been increasingly exposed to gambling in various forms. Now we need new laws that are properly adapted to the digital age. “The older generation of regulator, researcher and policy-maker has absolutely no conception of the many forms that gambling now takes,” says Cassidy.
