Gambling ads on social media reach more than twice as many men as women: study

25M and I live in a state where the majority of gambling is illegal (Texas). Despite that I am having gambling ads shoved down my throat daily on Instagram. I never click on them and I swipe away instantly when I see them, but still get them regardless. All of them are prediction market and mobile game slots.

I had no idea the age range was so low! In my mind, men or women, my stereotype of an addicted gambler is older because they’re often retired and have nothing better to do. Or at least they’re in their 40s or 50s and are doing it because they’re… bored? Idk, I don’t get gambling personally. But this is a surprise.

Ad Targeting Confirmed To Exist

Is this surprising? Expected? Simple observation?

Presumably these ads are targeted intentionally to their audience, and this research confirms it.

Fork found in kitchen.

alternative title: 1/3 gambling ads now target women, massive increase

An inequality that must be addressed!

Young men believe, thanks to social media constantly repeating them the same message, that the only way out of a sad wage cuck existence is hypergambling. This text opened my eyes to it https://oldcoinbad.com/p/long-degeneracy

This probably has to do with how men use the internet. When it comes to addictive stuff, as well as watching ... well ... nudity, but also high-intensity gaming, one can assume that males are more interested and active in this regard in general, on average. So if you are more active or spend more time, naturally ads would target you more.

On the other hand, I use e. g. ublock origin so thankfully most of those spam-ads that are of zero interest to me, I never get to see. Contrary to evil Empires such as Google with its "acceptable ads" propaganda crap, I never felt any downside to perma-banning ads from my life. (Does not work 100%, but the reduction I got via ublock origin and others is enormous - and that's great.)

Unfortunately some people are really susceptible to ads and addictive behaviour. I know someone personally who got into that, and subsequently also debts due to feeding that gambling addiction. It is very hard to break out of that cycle once you get in, depending on how the brain operates; similar how some can not stop smoking. Thankfully I never got into any of that because I also never fully trusted my brain, so the better strategy was to consistently say nope. But the brain of people operates differently, some really have a very hard time to avoid patterns that feed them into an addiction system, and ads also try to exploit this (another reason why all companies relying on ads should be removed, starting with Mr. Google, the AdCompany Number #1).