When Kim Freudenberg’s son, Kurt, started online gambling at age 11 — first through video game skins, then virtual betting sites — she had no idea it would cost him thousands of dollars and derail his college education.
Now, California lawmakers are trying to stop similar cases with a new bill aimed at restricting online gambling access for minors in the state.
Assembly Bill 2617 — the Protecting Our Kids from Gambling Addiction Act — proposes to ban platforms from providing gambling and predictive market wagering to minors. Sponsored by Assemblymembers Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, and Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, the landmark legislation would also make it unlawful for platforms like Kalshi to advertise betting to minors and require age assurance before a user can place a bet.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for legalized betting in 2018, betting and prediction market wagering have surged online, particularly among adolescent boys and young men like Kurt.
“Companies are profiting from a legal loophole that’s allowed people to wager money for outcomes of sports events or other real-world events and so-called predictive markets,” Schiavo said. “We know it’s gambling, and it becomes especially dangerous when companies exploit that loophole to actively target kids.”
Gambling sites target boys
About half of 16-year-old boys said they gambled in the past year, according to a recent report by Common Sense Media, a children’s online safety group and supporter of the bill. Roughly two-thirds of adults age 21 and older also reported participating in at least one form of gambling before they turned 21, gambling at higher rates than older generations, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling.
Timothy Fong, clinical professor of psychiatry and co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, attributed the generational shift to “frictionless gambling.” He pointed to online platforms where younger users, who are more vulnerable to developing gambling addiction, can easily bet on sports, gaming and politics.
“Combine that with the rise of social media and partnerships between sports leagues and influencers, we’ve created a world where gambling is now seen as part of the entertainment fabric,” said Fong.
Although California does not allow traditional sports betting, legal prediction markets allow users to buy and sell contracts based on the outcomes of future events, such as sports or political outcomes. About half of the boys are exposed to gambling content on platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
“My son doesn’t have to go looking for this predictive gambling content. It finds him, it finds his friends, and it is dressed up to look like sports knowledge, like a fun way to earn a little money, not like gambling, (which is) what it is,” said Bonta.
Gambling addiction, which disproportionately affects boys and men, is closely related to a higher risk of suicide and social isolation. Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered state agencies last year to expand support for boys and young men in response to a rising “loneliness epidemic” among the population.
“The problem is when gambling is viewed as a solution, as an escape, as a possibility out of loneliness,” said Fong, who is also a clinical practitioner. Just last week, he said he saw a 19-year-old patient who had lost thousands of dollars to a gambling addiction on his phone.
“He would say, ‘I lose five, six, seven hours a day on my phone, researching, gambling, looking at different bets, moving money around, and I would just do it from my bed,’” Fong said. “His biggest lament wasn’t the money loss, it was just time.”
The Common Sense Media report, which surveyed 1,017 boys ages 11 to 17 across the United States in July 2025, found that boys who gamble spend an average of $54 annually, mostly on online gaming, some in sports and traditional betting. Boys who lost $51 or more in the past year spent an average of $159, more than eight times the $19 average among those who lost smaller amounts.
Winning was the ‘worst thing that ever happened’
Freudenberg, a high school physics teacher in San Francisco, said her son “spiraled so far down that literally all he could do was sit and gamble.” Had AB 2617 been a law 10 years ago, the bill’s protections might have prevented the adrenaline rush Kurt experienced when he won $2,000 in a video game, she said.
“He said, ‘That’s the worst thing that happened, because then, I was hooked,’” said Freudenberg, who founded the gambling resource group Parents Standing Together. “Just delaying the exposure is so important, and getting rid of the advertising, so kids don’t see it as a fun, awesome thing to do without the risk.”
It took multiple stints of rehab for Kurt to finally find his way back to college, where he has been in recovery for two years.
Schiavo said the bill is a first step in legally classifying prediction markets as gambling, for which California regulates advertising to minors. Today, there is “no explicit statute preventing these companies from exposing minors to wagering or marketing these products directly to them,” she said.
But Fong said the bill falls short of completing that promise. He said the state should also levy the same taxes on prediction markets and game-based bets as it does on casinos, and that schools should explicitly teach students about the risks of gambling in California’s new high school financial literacy requirement.
“We have six months of what’s a savings account, what’s a credit card, but not teaching people how to manage loss if they do suffer pain from these apps,” Fong said.
Freudenberg said school districts should also adopt formal gambling policies, like they do to deter alcohol and substance use. And, school counselors should educate both students and parents to identify and prevent online gambling addiction at an early age, she said.
“What could have saved (Kurt) is more awareness of people just understanding the things I was seeing,” Freudenberg said. “It wasn’t even on my radar at all, so I couldn’t have intervened and tried to start protecting him against something that I didn’t even know was happening.”