Choices Over Consequences

Category: Uncategorized

  • Are Prediction Markets Creating a Back Door to Youth Gambling?

    Are Prediction Markets Creating a Back Door to Youth Gambling?

    Sports betting, prediction markets, video-game gambling, and gambling advertisements are often treated as separate issues. For teenagers, however, they increasingly exist in the same digital world. A sports prediction, a loot box, and a betting advertisement can all appear on the same phone—sometimes within minutes of one another. This raises an important question: Should youth protections depend on what a platform calls its product, or on how that product actually functions?

    A prediction market allows users to buy contracts based on whether a future event will happen. That event might involve an election, an awards show, the economy, or the outcome of a football game. If the prediction is correct, the contract pays out; if it is wrong, the user loses the money spent on it.

    The federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission describes these products as “event contracts” that can be used to predict outcomes or speculate on future events. Because they are structured as financial contracts, prediction markets may be regulated federally instead of through the state gambling systems that oversee sportsbooks. However, when a user puts money on which team will win a game, the experience can look and feel extremely similar to sports betting. (CFTC)

    In New York, users must be at least 21 to participate in mobile sports betting. Kalshi, a federally regulated prediction-market platform, permits users who are at least 18 to open accounts. This means an 18-year-old in New York may be unable to place a sports bet through a licensed sportsbook but may be able to trade a contract based on the outcome of the same game. (Kalshi)

    New York is currently challenging that distinction. On July 31, 2026, Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James announced a lawsuit accusing Kalshi of operating an unlicensed gambling platform. The state argues that Kalshi’s sports contracts qualify as gambling and allow users ages 18 through 20 to participate even though they are below New York’s legal age for mobile sports betting. Kalshi’s position has centered on its status as a federally regulated financial exchange. (New York Attorney General)

    The disagreement is therefore larger than one company. It concerns whether a sports-related contract should be regulated according to its financial label or according to the activity taking place.

    Teenagers do not experience these products as separate legal categories. They see sports-betting promotions on social media, gambling-like features inside video games, and apps that present predictions as trading. The language may change, but each activity can involve risking something valuable for an uncertain reward.

    Research cited in the sponsor memo for New York’s No Gambling Ads for Kids Act found that 61 percent of boys ages 11–17 had seen gambling advertisements on YouTube, while 60 percent had encountered them on social media. The memo also states that some young users reported gambling after seeing these advertisements. (New York State Senate)

    This exposure matters because the line between gambling, gaming, and financial trading is becoming less visible. Words such as “contracts,” “markets,” and “trading” may make an activity sound more like investing even when a user is still risking money on an uncertain event.

    New York lawmakers have already begun treating these activities as parts of the same problem. The State Senate passed the No Gambling Ads for Kids Act by a 60–0 vote on June 1, 2026. The bill would restrict social-media platforms from showing minors advertisements for sports betting, prediction-market wagering, online sweepstakes, traditional online gambling, and gambling-related video-game features. It is currently pending in the Assembly Consumer Affairs and Protection Committee. (New York State Senate)

    Other policy approaches being discussed include applying a consistent minimum age to sports betting and sports-related prediction contracts, strengthening identity and age-verification systems, limiting gambling advertisements shown to minors, and teaching students how to recognize the financial and psychological risks connected to gambling-like products. Each approach also raises practical questions involving privacy, federal and state authority, and how broadly gambling-related products should be defined.

    The debate over prediction markets shows how quickly technology can blur older legal categories. A sportsbook may call an activity a bet, while a prediction market may call it a trade. For a young user risking money on the outcome of a game, that difference may not be obvious.

    As these platforms continue to grow, policymakers face a central question: When two products create similar experiences and risks, should young people receive different protections simply because the products are regulated under different names?

  • The Casino in Your Pocket

    For most of American history, gambling was something people had to go somewhere to do. Casinos, racetracks, lottery counters, and even illegal bookmakers created some kind of barrier between everyday life and placing a bet. Today, that barrier can be as small as opening an app.

    That change is especially noticeable for younger people. Sports betting has become part of watching a game, prediction markets let people put money on everything from elections to sports, and social media is filled with screenshots of parlays, crypto trades, and stock options. Even video games have loot boxes and other features built around spending money for an uncertain reward. These things obviously are not all the same, but they increasingly exist in the same space, on the same phones, and sometimes with surprisingly similar experiences.

    That is what makes this such an interesting policy problem. Our laws still draw fairly clear lines between gambling, investing, gaming, and prediction markets. For the people actually using them, those lines are becoming much harder to see.

    It is easy to forget how quickly this happened. Until 2018, sports betting was effectively illegal across most of the United States. That year, the Supreme Court’s decision in Murphy v. NCAA struck down the federal law that had largely prevented states from legalizing it. In just a few years, sports betting went from something mostly associated with Las Vegas and illegal bookmakers to something advertised during games and accessible from a phone. According to the American Gaming Association, Americans legally wagered about $167 billion on sports in 2025, an 11 percent increase from the previous year.

    For adults, that represented a huge change in access. For teenagers, it meant growing up in a completely different environment. A January 2026 national study from Common Sense Media found that 36 percent of boys between 11 and 17 had gambled within the previous year. By age 17, that number was nearly half. The social effect was even more striking: more than 8 in 10 boys whose friends gambled also gambled, compared with fewer than 2 in 10 boys whose friends did not.

    Gambling has not just become easier to access. It has become much more normal. Someone watching a basketball game can see betting odds during the broadcast, scroll past a sportsbook advertisement, and hear friends discussing their parlays the next morning. But sports betting might actually be the easiest part for policymakers to deal with, because at least everyone agrees that it is gambling.

    Prediction markets make things much more complicated.

    In New York, someone has to be 21 to legally use a mobile sportsbook. Yet certain prediction markets allow users beginning at 18 to trade contracts based on future events, including sports. In July 2026, New York sued Kalshi, arguing that the company is effectively offering unlicensed gambling, while Kalshi argues that its contracts are financial products regulated under federal commodities law.

    The result is strange: a 19 year old in New York can be too young to legally bet on the outcome of a game through a sportsbook, but old enough to put money on the outcome of that same game through a prediction market. In fact, recent data reported by MarketWatch estimates that users ages 18 to 20 have already wagered more than $5 billion on Kalshi.

    Legally, there is an explanation for the distinction. From the perspective of the 19 year old pressing a button on a phone, it is much harder to explain.

    The same issue appears with investing. Investing is obviously not the same as gambling. Buying shares in a company means owning part of an actual business, and long term investing is an important way people build wealth. But opening an investing app today does not necessarily mean buying an index fund and holding it for thirty years. Users can trade short term options, speculate on cryptocurrencies, and move money in and out of positions almost instantly.

    The important question is not whether stocks are gambling. They are not. It is whether the experience of taking financial risks online is starting to converge even while the laws governing those risks remain completely separate.

    Open an app, pick an outcome, put money behind it, watch what happens, and try again. That cycle can exist in very different forms across a sportsbook, prediction market, speculative trade, or even a video game. The economics may be different, but the person using the phone does not experience a regulatory category. They experience the product.

    Schools are already seeing the effects. A 2025 survey from Next Gen Personal Finance found that 83 percent of more than 1,000 teachers surveyed had recently seen or heard about students gambling or betting on sports. Data from GoGuardian, reported by Chalkbeat, also shows that schools block roughly 140,000 attempts to access gambling, betting, and fantasy sports sites every month. The rate has increased by nearly 30 percent since the company began tracking it in 2022.

    That feels like a major hole in what schools consider financial literacy.

    Students learn about compound interest, credit scores, budgeting, and investing. Those things matter. But students should also understand why a sportsbook makes money, what expected value means, how an options contract differs from owning a stock, how prediction markets work, and how to recognize when taking financial risks has stopped being entertainment.

    This does not mean schools should tell students that every risky financial decision is bad. The goal should actually be the opposite: students should be able to tell the difference between different kinds of risk. Financial literacy should reflect the financial world students actually live in, not the one that existed twenty years ago.

    There is also a larger role for regulation. Digital platforms can track how often someone logs in, how much they spend, what they do after losing, and what makes them come back. Artificial intelligence will only make that personalization more precise. That creates an important question: If a platform can become extremely good at recognizing the behavior that keeps someone betting, shouldn’t regulators expect it to become equally good at recognizing the behavior that suggests someone should stop?

    New York is already beginning to consider that question. In March 2026, Governor Kathy Hochul proposed protections that would prevent sports wagering companies from using AI to target bettors and would create activity triggers requiring companies to check on users displaying signs of possible gambling harm.

    The debate over gambling used to be much simpler. Should casinos be legal? Should states have lotteries? Should sports betting be allowed? Those questions still matter, but they do not fully describe the world younger people are entering anymore.

    A teenager can move from a video game to a prediction market to a trading app without ever leaving the same screen, while each activity may be governed by a completely different regulator, age requirement, or definition of gambling.

    Public policy has spent decades deciding where to draw the line around gambling. Technology keeps finding new ways to blur it.

    A generation ago, keeping a teenager away from gambling could at least partly mean keeping them out of a casino. Today, the harder question is what happens when the casino no longer looks like one.

    Sources

    Common Sense Media. Betting on Boys: Understanding Gambling Among Adolescent Boys. January 29, 2026.

    American Gaming Association. Commercial Gaming Revenue Hits $78.7 Billion in 2025, Driving Record $18.1 Billion in Gaming Taxes Nationwide. 2026.

    Supreme Court of the United States. Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association. May 14, 2018.

    Next Gen Personal Finance. NGPF Flash Survey: 83% of Teachers Report Students Gambling on Sports. April 2, 2026.

    Chalkbeat. Lily Altavena, As More Teen Boys Turn to Sports Betting, Financial Literacy Teachers Rush to Show Gambling’s Real Odds. July 29, 2026.

    Office of the New York Attorney General. Governor Hochul and Attorney General James Announce New York Has Sued Kalshi for Running Illegal Gambling Operation. July 31, 2026.

    Office of Governor Kathy Hochul. Keeping New Yorkers Safe: Governor Hochul Previews Measures to Keep Youth From Sports Wagering and Protect New Yorkers From Gambling Harms. March 30, 2026.

    MarketWatch. People Under 21 Can’t Use Most Sportsbooks, So They’ve Wagered Over $5 Billion on Kalshi Instead. September 2026.

  • Is Social Media Actually Ruining Teen Self Esteem?

    If you ask most adults about social media, you’ll probably hear the same thing:

    “It’s destroying your generation.”

    Social media is often blamed for low self esteem, anxiety, and mental health struggles among teenagers. While there is no doubt that social media can have negative effects, recent research suggests that the relationship may be more complicated than many people think.

    A 2021 study published in the Journal of Communication followed 387 adolescents and examined how social media use affected their self esteem throughout the day. Researchers found that for the majority of teens, social media had little to no impact on self esteem. However, a smaller group experienced positive effects, while another group experienced negative effects. In other words, social media does not affect everyone the same way.

    This finding is important because it challenges the idea that social media is either completely good or completely bad. Instead, it suggests that the impact depends on the individual and how they use it.

    Think about two different students.

    One student uses social media to stay connected with friends, celebrate accomplishments, and find supportive communities. For them, social media may increase confidence and strengthen relationships.

    Another student constantly compares themselves to influencers, athletes, or classmates. They may focus on likes, followers, and unrealistic standards. For them, social media may lower self esteem and create feelings of insecurity.

    The platform is the same. The experience is different.

    This idea connects directly to the theme of Choices Over Consequences. While we cannot always control what appears on our screens, we can control many of the choices we make online. We choose who we follow. We choose what content we engage with. We choose how much time we spend scrolling and whether we compare ourselves to others.

    Small choices can have a significant impact over time.

    If social media leaves you feeling motivated, connected, and supported, it may be serving a positive role in your life. If it consistently leaves you feeling stressed, inadequate, or unhappy, it may be time to rethink how you use it.

    The question is not whether social media is good or bad.

    The better question is: How is social media affecting you personally?

    Understanding that answer may be one of the most important digital choices you make.

    Source: Communication Studies Valkenburg et al., “Social Media Use and Adolescents’ Self Esteem: Heading for a Person Specific Media Effects Paradigm” (2021). 

  • The Pressure to Always Be “On”

    It’s 1:30 AM, your phone lights up, and your friends are still texting, sending TikToks, snapping, and continuing conversations that should have ended hours ago. You’re exhausted, you know you have school the next day, but you stay on anyway. Not because the conversation actually matters, but because not answering feels like you’re slowly disappearing from it.

    This is the kind of pressure that doesn’t look like pressure at all. No one is telling you to stay up, and no one is forcing you to respond. It feels like your own decision, which is exactly why it’s so easy to ignore what’s really going on.

    Research connected to the National Institutes of Health shows that peer influence plays a major role in how teenagers use social media, especially when they are trying to feel included. Even without direct pressure, the need to stay connected can quietly shape behavior, leading people to spend more time online than they actually want to.

    In the moment, staying up later does not seem like a big deal. It feels like one small decision that will not really affect anything. The problem is that these decisions rarely stay small. Losing sleep, constantly checking your phone, and staying mentally involved in conversations late at night can build into stress, lower energy, and changes in mood over time. Studies on adolescents have also linked peer related pressure to increased anxiety and emotional strain, even when the pressure is indirect.

    A big part of this comes down to how much social connection matters, especially during high school. There is an unspoken expectation to be available, to respond quickly, and to stay part of everything. Choosing to step away can feel like choosing to be left out, even if that is not actually the case.

    That is where “Choices Over Consequences” becomes more than just a phrase. It is not about one night or one decision. It is about recognizing when you are acting out of habit or pressure instead of what you actually need. These small moments, like deciding whether to keep scrolling or finally go to sleep, are where the pattern either continues or starts to change.

    At the same time, this is not only an individual issue. The way social media platforms are designed plays a role in keeping people online longer, especially at night. Features like constant notifications, read receipts, and endless scrolling are built to encourage users to stay engaged. Some policymakers have started to question whether these designs should be regulated, especially for younger users, with ideas like limiting certain app features during nighttime hours or requiring stronger protections for teen accounts.

    That means the responsibility is not just on individuals to make better choices. It also raises the question of whether companies should be held accountable for creating environments that make those choices harder in the first place.

    Choosing to put your phone down does not feel important in the moment, but it is. It is a small way of taking control back, even if it means missing part of a conversation that will most likely not matter the next day.

    Source:

    National Institutes of Health (NIH) – “The Power of Peers”
    https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2021/09/power-peers



  • Teen Suicide on Screen: What the Research Shows

    When a show about teen suicide becomes a cultural phenomenon, it does more than trend. It enters bedrooms, group chats, and late night scrolling sessions. For many teenagers, these stories feel personal and urgent. But researchers have been asking a difficult question: what happens when suicide is portrayed in vivid detail to a young audience?

    The answer, according to several major studies, is that portrayal is not neutral.

    In 2020, researchers such as Thomas Niederkrotenthaler published a study in JAMA Psychiatry examining U.S. suicide rates after the release of the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, 13 Reasons Why follows a high school student, Hannah Baker, who dies by suicide and leaves behind a series of recorded tapes explaining the reasons she made this decision. Each episode centers on one of those “reasons,” portraying bullying, assault, and social isolation as contributing factors. The first season originally included a graphic depiction of Hannah’s suicide, which later drew criticism from mental health professionals.

    Researchers found that in the months following the show’s debut in April 2017, suicide rates among young, particularly boys aged ten to seventeen, increased significantly compared to expected trends. Some estimates suggested roughly a 28 percent increase among this age group in the month immediately after the release.

    However, the study did not claim that the show directly “caused” individual suicides. Instead, it showed a statistically significant population level increase that could not be explained by seasonal patterns alone. In other words, the timing mattered.

    For a show centered on a graphic, emotionally charged suicide narrative, the findings raised serious concerns about how stories are framed and delivered.

    This phenomenon is not new. Researchers have documented what is known as the Werther effect, named after Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, written in the 18th century.

    In modern research, David Gould and colleagues in 2003 found that highly publicized and sensationalized suicide coverage in the media was associated with subsequent increases in suicide rates. The more detailed and dramatic the coverage, the stronger the effect.

    In simple terms, what people see can influence what they consider possible. When suicide is shown as a powerful response to pain, it may make the idea feel more real or available to someone who is already struggling. Teenagers can be especially vulnerable because they are still developing emotionally and may act more impulsively than adults.

    This does not mean media alone causes suicide. But, it does mean that how suicide is portrayed can affect the risk of viewers and potentially influence them.

    In a world where streaming platforms reach millions of teenagers overnight, storytelling carries weight, For some viewers, these narratives are not just entertainment. They can feel personal, validating, or even instructive. When decades of research show that certain portrayals increase risk, the conversation shifts from opinion to evidence.

    The overall goal is not to silence difficult stories. It is to tell them in ways that protect, rather than harm, the people watching.

    Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among adolescents in the United States. When evidence suggests that certain portrayals increase risks are followed by measurable increases in youth suicide rates, that is no longer a cultural discussion. It is a public health concern.

  • The Entropy Theory of Everyday Decisions

    Most people think choices happen in the moment. You pick this or that, yes or no, now or later. But, physics says something different. Physics tells us that every tiny action changes the entire system around it in ways we cannot totally see.

    In thermodynamics there is something called entropy, which is basically the measure of disordered. The Nobel Prize Committee once described entropy as the way energy naturally spreads out unless something is intentionally stopping it. In other words, the universe does not drift towards structure. It drifts toward mess, unless we choose to direct it.

    So, you might be wondering, what does this have to do with us saying no to something risky, or saying yes to something that moves us forward?

    Well, choice is the force that pushes back against mental entropy.

    Your day is not just something you move through, but rather a system you influence. If you stay positive, the natural direction is drift. Your mind slips into the easiest patterns instead of what’s best. Disorder rises, not because you are weak, but because that is simply how systems behave when nothing pushes back.

    But, the moment you make a deliberate choice – even a small one – you drop energy back into your system and suddenly the path changes. One intentional moment becomes a hinge that redirects everything else.

    Physicist Arthur Eddington once said that if your theory goes against the law of entropy, it will not survive. Choices Over Consequences is basically the opposite idea. If your actions go against entropy you will survive, grow, and move. Additionally, Psychologist Roy Baumeister’s work on self control found that it operates like a limited resource, and it drains throughout the day as we resist impulses or make decisions. But, the deeper truth is this: self control uses energy because it is actively fighting the system’s natural slide toward disorder. These studies show that when people exert self control, their cognitive resources temporarily descrease. But, when they make intentional choices early, later choices become easier. This is due to the fact that early structure reduces later entropy.

    So, every choice you make – all of them – is a way of lowering your entropy of your own life. It is not about perfect, or toughness, or pretending everything is easy. It is about recognizing that you have the power to add energy back into your day whenever you decide to.

    You cannot stop the universe from drifting, but you can stop yourself from drifting with it. Every time you choose intention over impulse, you bend the future in your favor.

    Sources:

    • Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1252–1265.
    • Muraven, M., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). Self regulation and depletion of limited resources: Does self control resemble a muscle? Psychological Bulletin, 126(2), 247–259.
    • Eddington, A. (1928). The Nature of the Physical World. Cambridge University Press.

  • The Hardest Thing to Say

    We all say it sometimes without realizing it — “That could never be me.” It is an easy thought to have when you hear about someone getting into an accident or making a choice that changed everything. But that same mindset is what often keeps people from stepping in when they see a friend about to take a risk. It is not that we do not care, but rather that we convince ourselves to think that everything will be fine.

    I used to think speaking up was something you only needed to do in big, serious situations. But most of the time, it starts small. It is when your friends grabs their keys, even though they are too tired to drive. It is when someone says, “I’m fine,” but you know they are not. It is when you feel that quiet sense that something could go wrong, and you decide whether to ignore it or act on it.

    A study I read by psychologists Latane and Darley explained why people hesitate in moments like these. They called it the “bystander effect.” It means that the more people there are around, the less likely anyone is to act, because everyone assumes someone else will. The same idea can happen even between two close friends. We tell ourselves it is not our place or that it is not as serious as it seems. But in reality, that hesitation can make all the difference.

    I have been in those moments where it feels uncomfortable to say something. You start to wonder, What if they get mad? What if I’m wrong? But then I think about how much worse it would feel if something actually happened. Most of the time, people respect honesty more than silence. When you speak up, even in small ways, it reminds your friends that you care about them enough to say something when it matters.

    The truth is, it takes more courage to stop someone for a second than to pretend you did not notice. Those seconds are what keep people safe. You never really know how much a small voice can change the outcome of a moment until you use it.

    Source: Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1968). Group Inhibition of Bystander Intervention in Emergencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

  • The Power of Choice

    The older I get, the more I realize that every decision, no matter how small or forgetable, says something about who I’m becoming. Between sports, school, and everything else going on, it’s easy to forget that even small decisions can shape who we are. I started reading and watching more about why people make the choices they do, and I came across this study called “Peer Influences on Adolescent Decision Making.” It immediately caught my attention because it explained something I think most teenagers feel but never really talk about.

    According to the study, when teens are around their friends, the reward center of the brain becomes more active, which makes risky behavior feel more exciting. Essentially, our brains are wired to make peer pressure feel good in the moment. Reading this makes me realize that saying no is not only about your willpower but understanding what is happening in your own mind. Once you understand this, you start to realize how much control you actually have. Keeping this in mind can make a crucial difference in your day-to-day decision making, and I have already started to notice it myself!

    I have also realized that it is easy to fall into moments that do not seem like a big deal at the time. Maybe it’s saying yes to something you’re unsure about, or staying quiet when you should speak up. But those moments can define us. I’ve noticed that the times I have stopped, thought, and made the safer choice ended up being the moments I was content with later on. The feeling of stress after a bad decision is something everyone understands – that pit in your stomach that makes you wish you could change something that is already in the past. Those moments are a remainder that even small choices can have actual lasting effects (especially as a chronic overthinker).

    I’ve made mistakes and learned from them, but I think that is the point. Every decision, good or bad, teaches you something about who you are and who you want to be.

    Source: Steinberg, L. (2008). Peer Influences on Adolescent Decision Making. Current Directions in Psychological Science.