Young gamers are being primed for gambling, warns former addict

A father and son are campaigning for tighter regulation on in-game spending, which they say ‘normalises betting for children’

In 2014, Adam Bradford was living an ordinary life in suburban Sheffield, when his father, David, was jailed for two years for stealing £53,000 from his employers to fund a compulsive online gambling habit he’d kept hidden from his family, the news of his downfall splashed across the local paper. “We were devastated because we didn’t know what a gambling addiction really was,” says Adam, 26, co-founder of the Safer Online Gambling Group (SOGG). “In fact we didn’t believe such a thing could exist; we had no awareness of it.”

Slowly, the family started to understand David’s addiction as a psychological problem that needed treatment. But not everyone felt the same. “The news had portrayed our family as ignorant and my dad as a liar and a cheat, and the story about gambling addiction wasn’t being told,” says Adam, whose twin brothers were just 18 at the time. “It was all about criminality, stupidity, carelessness. So we decided to change it.”

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Lk2kkx