Online gambling by European teenage boys is becoming a major public health concern as one in eight now gambling regularly, according to a Europe-wide survey of school students aged 15 and 16.
The results of the four-yearly survey, in which 96,000 school students in 35 countries took part, reveal that while teenage smoking and drinking are showing signs of decline, there are new concerns about the dangers of excessive screen time and new psychoactive drugs.
The results published on Tuesday show that the web is not only an integral part of daily life for the current generation of teenagers in a way that was not true even five years ago, but there are new worries about addictive use.
It may not be surprising to find that European teenagers use the internet on average 5.8 days a week and that girls (83%) use social media more regularly – on at least four days in the past week – than boys (73%). Nor that online gaming is far more prevalent among boys (39%) than among girls (7%).
But the 2016 Espad survey also reveals that 23% of teenage boys across all of the 35 European countries report gambling online for money in the past year compared with only 5% of girls, despite the fact that underage gambling is banned in many countries.
As many as one in eight teenage boys (12%) report gambling frequently – two to four times a month or more often – in the past 12 months. The highest rates of frequent online gambling by teenage boys – one-third or more – were found in Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Montenegro and Slovenia.
"Measures to prevent adolescents from developing problems associated with gambling, such as debts, psychological deficits and social disadvantages, are of high priority," say the authors of the Espad survey report.
The 2016 results show that more than one in five teenagers (23%) used the web for online gaming regularly – at least four times in the past week. The highest rates for regular online gaming among teenage boys are to be found in Denmark (64%), Sweden (58%), Estonia (55%), Norway (52%) and Finland (51%). Girls are far less interested, with their participation peaking at 28% in Denmark.
Espad says that UK data shows that online gaming has risen from 31% of teenagers in 2007 to 44% in 2015: "Research on factors associated with gaming indicates that early onset, opposite-sex friends, and minimal parental mediation increase the risk for gaming. A high level of game-playing was related to bullying in boys and lower life satisfaction in girls," it reports.
The sixth Espad survey, which is the first to add questions on teenage internet use, also shows that illicit drug use remains stable with an average of 18% of teenagers saying they have used an illicit substance at least once in their lives. Cannabis remains the most popular and the most easily available.
New psychoactive substances (NPS) – often referred to as "legal highs" which imitate the effects of more traditional illicit drugs – have been tried by 4% of European teenagers. The survey shows they are now more commonly used than amphetamine, ecstasy, cocaine or LSD. The highest levels of NPS use were in Poland, Estonia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Ireland.
There are more positive developments on teenage smoking and drinking. A majority – 54% – of European teenagers report they have never smoked and fewer than a quarter – 21% – say they are "current smokers".
Teenage drinking has also declined from 56% saying they drunk some alcohol in the previous month in 2005 to 46% in 2015, but the Espad researchers say that "heavy episodic drinking" remains a concern among 15- and 16-year-olds with levels unchanged over the past 20 years.
The researchers say there is mounting evidence that excessive internet use, gaming and gambling have the same potential to become addictive as psychoactive substances so they extended the scope of the survey to monitor the extent of teenage activity.
They say there is a strong link between using drugs, including smoking and alcohol, and risky behaviour such as online gambling: "It seems necessary to make particular efforts to prevent early substance use and gambling as well as excessive use of the internet and gaming in childhood and adolescence," the authors conclude.
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