A few months ago, a parent I have known for a few years reached out to me, sounding worried. Her sixteen-year-old son had become absorbed in fantasy cricket apps. I asked if it involved money. But she was rather troubled by the way his mood seemed to rise and fall. I did not have a ready answer then. Yet her question lingered, opening up a much larger conversation: one that stretches far beyond a single app or a single child.
We tend to think of betting as something that begins in college or with the first taste of financial independence. But the path often starts much earlier, and rarely with what we would call betting at all. I recently came across the story of Kurt Freudenberg, who has spoken openly about his own journey. For him, it began at eleven, trading in-game cosmetic upgrades for real money. What started as harmless exchanges slowly shifted into small wagers, and by the time he placed his first real bet, he had already learned that money could appear, almost magically, by chance.
Today, Kurt is two years free from betting and studying psychiatry, hoping to help others notice these patterns sooner. He wishes he could tell his younger self that gambling changes the brain in ways that are hard to see, and that it nearly cost him everything before he understood what was happening.
Stories like Kurt’s are no longer rare. The numbers are staggering: over 155 million Indians used real money gaming platforms in 2024, and the industry is growing at a pace that feels almost impossible to keep up with. Government figures suggest that 45 crore people have felt the sting of loss through online money games, even as more than 1,500 betting websites have been blocked in recent years. What stands out to me is not just the scale, but how these habits take root, especially among teenagers. Neuroscience tells us that adolescence is a time when the promise of reward feels especially bright, while self-control is still finding its footing. It is the small, repeated bets, not the dramatic, one-time losses, that shape the mind profoundly and make their mark.
Two forces at work here are worth noticing for those of us guiding young people. The first is how invisible the risk can feel. A fifty-rupee entry seems harmless, almost forgettable, but it is through these small, repeated cycles of hope and disappointment that habits take hold. The second is the way stories travel. News of a classmate’s big win spreads like wildfire, while the far more common stories of loss remain silent, tucked away. This creates a world where the odds feel kinder than they really are, and the true cost is hidden in plain sight.
But the hard-to-ignore question I worry about most, both as a coach and as a parent, is this: what do our own habits teach the young people watching us? When we chat about IPL odds at the dinner table or cheer on an office fantasy league, we unknowingly show children that wagering is just another part of family life, even if we never mention betting by name. Research suggests that what we model at home matters more than any single conversation. Real prevention begins not with what we say to our children, but with the choices we make ourselves through our own actions. Choices that speak long before any app does.