Hey, Pew, Wanna Bet?
October 16, 2025
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
My Telegram Labyrinth book is almost over the finish line. I include some discussion of online gambling in Telegram. Of particular interest to me and my research team was kiddie games. A number of these reward the young child with crypto tokens. Get enough tokens and the game provides the player with options. A couple of these options point the kiddie directly to an online casino running in Telegram Messenger. What happens next? A few players win. Others lose. The approach is structured and intentional. The goal of some of these fun games is addicting youngsters to online gambling via crypto.
Nifty. Telegram has been up and running since 2013. In the last few years, online gambling has become a part of the organization’s strategic vision. Anyone, including a child with a mobile device, can play online gambling on Telegram. From Telegram’s point of view, this is freedom. From a parent who discovers a financial downside from their child’s play, this is stressful.
I read “Americans Increasingly See Legal Sports Betting As a Bad Thing for Society and Sports.” The Pew research outfit dug into online gambling. What did the number crunchers learn? Here are a handful of findings:
- More Americans view legal sports betting as bad for society and sports. (Hey, addiction is a problem. Who knew?)
- One-fifth of Americans bet online. The good news is that sports betting is not growing. (Is that why advertising for online gaming seems to be more prevalent?)
- 47 percent of men under 30 say legal sports betting is a bad thing, up from 22 percent who said this in 2022.
Now check out this tough-to-read graphic:
Views of online gambling vary within the demographic groups in the sample. I noted that old people (dinobabies like me) do not wager as frequently as those between the ages of 18 and 29. I wonder if the age of the VCs pumping money into AI come from this demographic. Betting seems okay to more of them. Ask someone over 65, only 12 percent of those you query will say, “Great idea.”
I would argue that online gambling is readily available. More services are emulating the Telegram model. The Pew study seemed to ignore the target demographic for the users of the Telegram kiddie gambling games. That is a whiff to me. But will anyone care? Only the parents and it may take years for the research firms to figure out where the key change is taking place.
Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2025
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