Key takeaways from this video:

- psychological and legal definitions of gambling

- peer pressure for young players and gambling

- dilution of value with virtual bucks

- learned behaviours/habits from loot boxes

Can playing games like Fortnite increase your child's risk of problem gambling as an adult?

Dr Le reviews one of many submissions for the 2018 Australian Government's Inquiry into Gaming Micro-Transactions for Chance-Based Items by Dr. James D. Sauer (PhD) from the University of Tasmania, Australia and Dr. Aaron Drummond (PhD) from Massey University, New Zealand.

"Loot box systems need not meet the legal criteria for gambling to have potentially adverse effects on players (especially young players). Of the games we reviewed, all were available to underage players and all (even those that did not meet all the psychological criteria for gambling) included mechanisms for initiating and maintaining player engagement that tap basic psychological principles associated with gambling (Drummond & Sauer, 2018).

Research investigating the exposure of adolescents to simulated gambling suggests that risks such as peer-pressure and the dilution of monetary value through the exchange of real currency for virtual currency might facilitate migration to monetary forms of gambling (King & Delfabbro, 2016).

Moreover, adolescents tend to have poorer impulse control than adults, potentially increasing their vulnerability to gambling-like mechanics and behaviours learned from these mechanisms (Lussier, Derevensky, Gupta, & Vitaro, 2014).

Finally, there is some evidence that the gaming population might be particularly at-risk for developing problematic gambling behaviours. For example, males are both more likely than females to develop pathological gambling behaviours (Johansson, Grant, Kim, Odlaug, & Götestam, 2009), and overrepresented in the video-gaming population (Entertainment Software Association, 2017).