OUTLINE FORMAT (Body of speech and purpose is different than informative speech)
Introduction:

Attention-Getter: According to the Gambling Commission, over 450,000 children aged 11 to 16 gamble regularly, more than those who have taken drugs, smoked or drank alcohol. Some even as young as 10 years old.

Specific Purpose: Today, I want to talk about how much of a problem gambling is in minors and online and why they need to change.

Credibility Statement: I myself was brought into online gambling at an early age and it has definitely affected me and the people around me. I have found that this is not an uncommon occurrence throughout other families.

Preview: I want to talk about why this problem exists and more importantly what can be done about it.


Transition: So let’s talk about why so many minors are starting to gamble more often, especially though online casinos.

Body
“Adolescents have an increased likelihood for developing addictive behaviours such as gambling.” (Castren) If you’re a parent, you may think that it's too early to think about your child to start gambling, considering the legal age to gamble in a casino or online is 18 or sometimes even 21. However many studies, such as one by Sari Castren from the Department of Public Health Solutions and Addictions Unit in Finland states that 51.6% of the respondents (adolescents aged 12-15 ~n 988) had gambled and 7.9% were identified as at-risk/problem gamblers. Problem gambling prevalence rate was 4.0% while the rate among online gamblers was five times higher at 21.9%; less than 10% of non-online gamblers were classified as at-risk gamblers, whereas more than 20% of online gamblers were classified as at-risk gamblers. Online gamblers were more likely than offline gamblers to engage in multiple forms of gambling, and they scored proportionally more frequently “high” in problem gambling severity. Commercial online gambling includes very similar types of games that you would see on casino floors. On top of that, smartphones, laptops, tablets, any electronic device that connects to the internet allows young people to gamble at any time, day or night.
	So how are children and adolescents get into gambling? Many are exposed due to TV and the internet, including lots of gambling advertisements, but more importantly the thousands of online gambling platforms which children might access. Personally I was brought into gambling because of a video game called Counter Strike: Global Offensive. I have always been a competitive person, and when I started playing video games more often back in my freshman year of highschool, I started taking this video game a little more seriously, being that it was at the top of the list for competitive esports. Considering I spent a lot of time on this game, I would put some money into it. The game offered cosmetic items that you could apply to your character. These items varied from sometimes 0.03 cents to the highest that I've personally seen which was $30,000 dollars. This doesn’t necessarily introduce someone into gambling, it's the method that these items were able to be purchased. In short, you buy a “case” as they call it, each case (after being released for about a month) would only cost you about 0.03 cents, however each case needs to be opened with a key that stayed around the  $2.50 mark. So essentially you’d be buying and opening the case for around 2 ½ dollars. The return value on these cases are completely random. As you can see here, (slide) the blue is the most common, which would give you more than likely a dollar or less back in value. Sometimes the purple or pink would give you that amount as well. The only sure way to get money back is rolling in the red or gold. Depending on how valuable that item is, the return value could potentially bring you up into the thousands or sometimes tens of thousands. On top of that, there were external websites associated with the items where you can trade them for paypal money or cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, which can then be converted to your bank account or cash. The thought of this drove me into buying sometimes 50 keys for these cases at a time.
	In a study conducted by Jesseca McBride and Jeffrey Derevensky, they examined the parallels between gambling and video game playing behavior among 1,229 adolescents and young adults. The results indicated that gamblers, relative to non-gamblers, were more likely to play video games and video game players were more likely than nonplayers to gamble. Eventually, I got burnt out of the video game, however that did not stop me from finding other places to gamble my money away online.
Online gambling itself is not prohibited under federal law by the gambler themselves in any way. Online gambling is treated differently throughout the U.S, and not all types of online gambling are fully legal even in states that do have more or less regulated industries. I’m not going to get into the specifics of each state, but as you can see the majority of states have it patently illegal, or not illegal for players. Okay, so if the majority of the states are banning online casinos, then how is it such a problem? The big thing is that the U.S. has not banned gambling through video games yet, because they are argued as “cosmetic items”. Another point, the majority of the gambling sites banned in the U.S. are ones that you enter your credit card information and gamble through that. The ones that minors are using are worldwide sites. These sites technically say that you are not allowed to use them if you are in the U.S., but there is no real punishment of you doing so or any way to stop you. They are also used through cryptocurrency, which has no trace to your personal info. All of this gives ease of access for anyone to waste their money away, minor or not.

SOLUTION

So what can you do about this? Findings released by PublicMind, Fairleigh Dickinson University's research center, show that two out of three Americans oppose the legalization of Internet gambling while. In terms of legality, you can write to your congressmen and let them know how you feel about the subject. However, there is not much legally you can do to prevent minors from becoming addicted. If you know someone who is into video games that include this concept of gambling, talk to them and ask if they have taken part of it. Same goes for people that are familiar with cryptocurrency, more than likely that have tried out gambling with it and could possibly be on their way to becoming addicted to it. I haven’t touched much up on it, but many people are also addicted to trading options in stock which are practically the same concept and could even be with higher amounts of money. There are plenty of non-profit organizations focused around educating the public regarding the social and economic impacts of gambling, including minors. Letting people know about them will help them learn more about how harmful gambling is and hopefully prevent the harm that it brings to them.


Conclusion

Signal End: Now I’d like to close with the following statements:

Review Main Points: From what I have shown you, hopefully you can see how common gambling is in minors and the problems that it could bring forth.