Online Casinos Affect Youth
A key argument that is consistently used against both the land and online casino
gambling industries are claims that the youth of these nations will be
negatively affected by liberalized gambling markets that have robust offerings.
The truth is though that there are strong and effective identification blocks in
place at many of the top gaming companies and current software capabilities are
almost making this argument a moot point. The Malaysian government has just
announced that it is abandoning government-level discussions about the
legalization and licensing of online casino betting sites because of fear from
the Muslim community and anti-gambling groups that internet gambling sites would
entice the youth to illegal place bets.
The online casinos are really losing out right now to a poor reputation that is
largely underserved because the instances of underage gambling are actually few
and far between. The real fear that is motivating the anti-internet gambling
concerns are motivated out of two places – a fear of change and a fear of
competition. For the religious anti-gambling groups they fear the accessibility
and ease of the online casinos and therefore feel threatened by the changes in
medium presented by the internet.
On the government and business level though concerns for the nation’s youth line
the headlines but really often take a back seat in the policies discussions
about concerns for the land gambling interests. There are a lot of protectionist
concerns that are masked by claims that the online casinos are going to bring
about social ills and other social issues that simply must be safeguarded
against by complete blocks. In the case of Malaysia’s stopped betting
legalization process the foes and backlash came from a place of fear rather than
protection – harder to dissuade in the grand scheme. |