He got hooked on betting at age 11. By college he gambled 15 hours a day.

The students in the audience — like those across the U.S. — are all too familiar with the explosion of apps that make it easy to bet on individual plays, international politics and awards show flubs. So are their parents.

“The three big things are drugs, alcohol and gambling, that parents might freak out about,” Henry Brown, a University School senior, said. “And I’d say gambling is probably the most common.”

The boys at University School shared how it’s become impossible to talk about the Cleveland Cavaliers’ prospects without ending up in debates over which bet to make on James Harden’s rebounds. When a teacher flipped on Olympic men’s hockey during class last month, a student said, a classmate groaned that he hadn’t put money on the game.

Gavin Owens said some of his classmates can’t seem to stop gambling. “They’re addicted — they’re not present when I’m around them,” the University School senior said, describing how one friend always has his phone on his lap with the betting apps open. “Their mind’s in another place — probably on the spreads.”

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National data on betting and gambling addiction among teens is limited, but smaller surveys conducted around the country suggest that underage gambling is widespread.

In a recent survey from Common Sense Media, a non-profit education and advocacy group, a third of boys in the U.S. between 11 and 17 reported gambling within the past year, including online sports betting, lottery tickets and poker games with friends. One survey in Massachusetts found that about 10% of kids who placed bets experienced “problematic gambling” that disrupted their personal lives, families or schooling.

Hooked at age 11

When Malek decided to share his story, he initially focused on high schoolers — but he's now increasingly booked for middle schools.

Kurt Freudenberg was just 11 when he started gambling, trading valuable “skins” — cosmetic upgrades used in video games — for digital currency he could use to bet on gambling sites. Within weeks, the sixth grader was betting thousands of dollars a day on online blackjack and roulette.

“It felt like a high, an extreme rush,” said Freudenberg, who is now 23. “I would play soccer and score a goal or get an A on a test — nothing compared to that high on gambling.”

By high school, Freudenberg expanded into sports betting on NBA and NFL games and offshore casinos that only accepted cryptocurrency, winning as much as $5,000 on a single bet — which he immediately plowed back into more gambling. “If I had a bad day I’d gamble. If I had a good day I’d gamble,” he said. “Gambling was my best friend.” The only difference: By high school, his classmates were all doing it, too.

Freudenberg's parents had no idea what was happening until he went off to college. By then he was gambling in his dorm 15 hours a day. He stopped showering, brushing his teeth or going to class.

“We thought he was gonna say it was drugs,” Kim Freudenberg, his mother, said. “But he said, ‘I’m gambling.’”

Gambling addiction clinics and support groups across the U.S. have had an influx of teenage boys and young men seeking treatment, providers and people in recovery said.

“When I started, most of the clients in the treatment program were probably in their 40s, 50s, 60s. Lottery, casino players, that sort of thing. And in the past few years, it’s just gotten really young,” said Elizabeth Thielen, senior director at Nicasa Behavioral Health Services, a treatment center in Illinois. “I had one parent who called whose child went through almost their entire college fund.”

Betting the over-underage

In most states, bettors have to be 21 to gamble in a brick-and-mortar casino.

But the explosion of online gambling has made it easier than ever for kids to place wagers — often without parental permission.

Online sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings are regulated by states as gambling companies, so they have to follow state age minimums. In most states you have to be 21 to gamble, though some will allow betting at 18. Betting apps require users to provide a name, address and Social Security number. These details need to match the bank account where any winnings will be paid out.

Underage bettors say there are many work-arounds. Older siblings and friends can set up accounts for them or act as bookies, and the personal information needed to create accounts is often easy to access.

“I’ve got a couple friends that use, like, maybe their parents’ or grandparents’ Social Security numbers,” Henry Brown, the University School student, told NBC News after he heard Malek’s talk. “Some of them had their parents’ permission. Some of them definitely didn’t.”

With massive ad campaigns and close partnerships with sports leagues, broadcasters and star athletes, gambling has become so normalized that parents are betting with their children as a bonding activity. (NBCUniversal, the parent company for NBC News, has a sponsorship agreement with DraftKings.)

“I’ve had lots of conversations with dads who are openly gambling with their kids throughout an entire game,” said Jeffrey Reynolds, president and CEO of Family and Children’s Association, a mental health and addiction counseling center in New York.

Both FanDuel and DraftKings said they have a zero tolerance policy for underage users and actively monitored accounts for suspicious activity. Accounts used by underage bettors will be closed and may be reported to state regulators, the companies said.

“This is a form of entertainment that is meant for adults, and those are the people that we want as our customers — not a 17-year-old who’s using his dad’s credit card,” Lori Kalani, head of responsible gaming for DraftKings, said.

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Meanwhile, the industry has expanded rapidly into sites that allow younger users to place bets. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, which are not currently regulated as gambling companies, have a minimum age of 18; both FanDuel and DraftKings recently expanded into prediction markets as well. Apps like Fliff, which bill themselves as “online sweepstakes” and not gambling sites, allow players 18 and up to use virtual currency to win real cash prizes.

Kalshi pointed to optional features like face ID that can help prevent children and others from accessing users’ accounts. “Children and minors don’t belong on Kalshi — making sure all traders are the adults who own accounts is our first priority,” the app explains in a message when users sign up for an account. Fliff said that it follows all state and federal regulations to ensure responsible gaming and that the majority of users opt to play for free.

But whatever the app or the rules, kids seem to find a way in. Offshore crypto casinos such as Rainbet require no age verification at all. They’re heavily promoted by celebrities and social media influencers who often stage attention-grabbing stunts as part of their gambling promotions. (Polymarket and Rainbet did not respond to requests for comment.)

After the morning assembly, Malek met with a smaller group of students who talked with him about all the pranks and memes they were seeing on social media.

“Guys kind of think it’s a stupid thing, but it at least puts it in your mind — so it’s effective in that way,” a student told him.

A sport and a pastime

In middle school, Saul Malek told the Ohio students, fantasy baseball became his gateway drug and an easy way to bond with friends. Then in high school, he started playing daily fantasy leagues on DraftKings, the precursor to the online sports gambling that became legal after a landmark 2018 Supreme Court decision. By the time Malek started actually betting on sports, he thought he had an edge — and that he should use it by gambling more.

“I told myself what I hear a lot of young guys in schools tell me: ‘Hey, I’ve been following sports since I came out the womb, a sports fan since birth, and I know which teams are superior,’” Malek told the boys. “It’s like, you know, I’m a moron if I don’t go up a little bit, because I’m clearly good at this.”

That’s why University School officials had invited Malek to come in the first place to speak to their students. Not because there’s an epidemic of gambling addiction in the student body — but because sports already play an outsize role at the school and, by extension, so does gambling.

“It has become inescapable if you’re watching a game,” said Krystopher Perry, director of the University School’s high school campus. “Are we going to stop every boy from gambling? No. But we need to educate them about the risk.”

As with other kinds of addiction, not everyone who places a bet ends up having a life-altering gambling problem. But online betting’s instant gratification makes it even easier for young people to get hooked. Sportsbooks have made it possible to bet not only on the outcome of games, but on prop bets tied to specific events, like whether LeBron James will score more than 10 points in the fourth quarter.

The constant highs and lows of sports betting can end up fueling an addiction, and young men are especially vulnerable, Reynolds said.

“When you talk about the lack of impulse control among adolescent boys, and you combine it with this notion that, ‘Hey, I know a little bit about sports, and I can outsmart the sportsbooks' — you have a disaster,” he said.

Some people in recovery who started betting in high school said the money felt far less real, partly because they didn’t need to provide for themselves.

“When I started, I had no responsibilities,” said a 21-year-old New Jerseyan, who started using Fliff to pick who would win NFL games as a high school senior, then quickly got hooked on online casino games. “You don’t care that your bank account is zero.”

The 21-year-old, who requested anonymity given the stigma attached to addiction, then starting dumping his entire paycheck from his part-time job installing appliances into gambling while he was still living at home. He said he eventually started stealing from his parents to finance his habit, telling himself that he’d put the money back once he won big.

“It’s a dream world,” he said. “I could just make money out of thin air.”

Parents may be among the last to find out about their children’s gambling problem. And their initial instincts to address the issue could end up making it even worse, people in recovery and their families said.

When Malek was in the throes of his addiction, a bookie showed up at his parents’ house in Houston and demanded $2,000, he told the students.

“Guys, I actually — I screwed up again. I messed up again. Please help me. I need some money now,” Malek recalled begging, promising he’d stop for good.

His parents told the bookie their son would pay him back — then helped Malek cover the loan he took out to do it. But the betting continued. It was only after his girlfriend dumped him and he was on the brink of suicide that he was ready to accept help.

Malek turned to Gamblers Anonymous. His sponsor told his parents what they needed to do as well: Under no circumstances were they to bail him out again. Because it could get even worse if their son’s gambling addiction continued.

“The end point for this is suicide. It ends in prison,” the sponsor explained.

A 2019 survey of Minnesota middle school and high school students conducted by state officials found that the small share of students experiencing problem gambling were far more likely to report a suicide attempt than other students. New research has shown the risks tend to increase when people with a gambling problem are in their 20s. Over the course of a lifetime, about one in eight people with gambling problems will attempt suicide, according to a 2024 study.

But public education has lagged far behind the problem, providers and advocates say.

“We had never had those conversations because I didn’t even know that we were supposed to have them,” said Kim Freudenberg, the mother in San Francisco. She joined a local Gam-Anon group for loved ones of people with gambling addictions and recently started a nonprofit to support parents of children struggling with gambling addiction.

Kurt Freudenberg finally got treatment in an inpatient rehab. He’s now back in college, studying psychology, and has been sober for two years. Looking back, he wishes someone had raised the risks of gambling — at school or anywhere else.