Gambling is a million times worse for young men than porn. It’s not even close.

A few days ago I posted a lil missive to notes. It was a “this probs isn’t worth a whole newsletter, but I still want to say it” situation:

It’s really wild to me how much of a chokehold porn has on the collective consciousness, especially in the realm of blaming it on young male malaise, when gambling is a bigger problem for young men across every measurable dimension by miles.

Then the post got a lot of attention. Someone asked if I’d written about it, so I decided to.

Before we proceed, for my new babies, here are my biases:

• I find gambling boring

• I think it’s a tax on the stupid

• I enjoy both making and consuming porn

• I think we should consider likely harms when prioritizing our concerns

• Sex is a bodily function, not a magic incantation (unless you want it to be)

• “Porn” is political speech, and as such is very much worth protecting

• Porn is an excellent addition to comprehensive, medically accurate, shame-free sex education to help teach people about their own bodies, orientations, and pleasure

That said, I’m open to new evidence. Not to brag, but I’ve been wrong many, many times.

THAT said, I am/was very much not wrong.

To cum to this conclusion, I looked at three measures for each:

1. Cost: How much money do users spend, on average?

2. Addictiveness: What’s the addiction risk level?

3. Horror: What are the most horrible potential downsides?

Before we get into it, though, I want to set the stakes a little by briefly discussing just how popular both porn and gambling are among young men, and the population writ large.

Here are some stats I found on gambling:

• ~10% of US voters bet online at least monthly

• 57% of American voters have gambled in the past year

• Most gambling still happens offline, in forms like lottery tickets and scratch-offs

• Men and women gamble at about the same rates

• In online sports betting, the gender gap is almost as large as in porn use

• Almost half of US men under 50 have some kind of online betting account

• About a quarter of US men under 50 bet online at least monthly

• About 20% of young American women have online sports gambled in the past year

• Gambling is much more common among people without college degrees

And here are some on porn:

• More than a quarter of Americans have looked at porn in the past month

• Slightly more than half of Americans had looked at porn in the past year

• 38% of Americans had looked at porn in the past month

• Unlike gambling, men aged 30-40 are most likely to look at porn

Bottom-line:

1. Porn is definitely the more popular of the two.

2. Online gambling, and sports betting in particular, skews even younger and more male than pornography.

Okay, now let’s get into the harm-comparison portion, starting with what each costs in terms of dollars and cents.

Spending

Young men lead the pack on big wagers.

The average Gen Z man who gambles spends almost $2,000 annually on his hobby – significantly more than same-age women and older gamblers.

I hate this.

First, Gen Z is poorer, so they’re necessarily pissing away spending a much larger percentage of their income on gambling.

It gets worse.

Almost a quarter of Gen Z gamblers see gambling as “an investment,” compared with just 10% and 3% of Gen X and boomer gamblers, respectively.

This sucks so badly. Because of the way interest compounds, who cares whether a boomer puts $2000 in an index fund or gambles it (no offense). But when a Gen Z idiot does this, it really, really fucks him.

I could not find survey data on how much people who look at porn spend on it. Yay stigma! But, if you divide the estimated overall size of the industry by the estimated yearly user-base, it averages out to less than $200 per user per year.

Bottom line: Financially speaking, there is no reality in which gambling isn’t a bigger problem for the people who do it. This is especially true for young men.

So that’s the money part of things. But what does the research say about addiction?

Addictiveness

Whew. I knew, or I thought I knew, that porn would win this round. But damn, I was not prepared for the extent of the win.

First of all, “porn addiction” isn’t real and gambling addiction very, very much is.

Of course, some porn users feel like they’re not in full control of their usage or blame problems in their lives on porn.

But when it comes to gambling, researchers measure addiction empirically with the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). It identifies problematic behaviors such as borrowing money to gamble or gambling despite directly related financial or emotional problems.

There is no PGSI for porn. Too few people borrow money to look at porn or goon so much it causes financial or emotional problems to be worth measuring. Instead, researchers refer to self-reported problematic pornography use (PPU) which is basically, I feel like I have a problem with porn. Unlike gambling, PPU isn’t really linked with frequency of use or time or money spent on porn. The only thing people who think they have a problem with porn tend to have in common is that they are much more likely to have been shamed about looking at it by a religious leader or romantic partner.

Gambling, by contrast, is one of the most “addictive” things humans regularly do. Not only is gambling addiction actually a real thing, but it’s also disturbingly common.

One-third of people who bet on sports online said they know someone who they describe has having or having had an online betting problem.

One survey described 10% of young American men as “problem gamblers.” This is in comparison to just 3 percent of the overall population.

One survey found that 21 percent of all US voters reported at least one problematic gambling behavior.

And online gambling (which is, again, especially popular among young men) seems to be more addictive than offline forms. In one survey, 68 percent of voters who admitted to online sports betting also admitted to at least one problem gambling behavior and 53 percent admitted to two or more. Online slots were even worse, with 81% of voters who played having at least one problematic behavior. Two-thirds of slots players had two or more.

Overall, about 3 percent of men score high enough on the PGSI to indicate a gambling problem, whereas for adult men under 30, it’s 10% and 7% for same-aged women. Older voters had much lower PGSI scores.

Bottom line: Again, no contest. Gambling “wins” by miles.

That was dark. Unfortunately, it’s about to get much darker.

Worst-case outcomes

Not only is gambling more popular and more addictive than porn – it’s also far, far, far more dangerous.

For example, to my knowledge, no one has ever killed themselves over a porn addiction.

By contrast, problematic gambling and suicide are very tightly linked. In fact, gambling may be the addiction disorder with the highest suicide rate.

Similarly, hit me up if you’ve ever heard of someone getting their kneecaps broken over unpaid porn debts.

Same for bankruptcy.

Porn is often blamed, incorrectly, for young male loneliness.

Most studies looking for links between porn, gambling, and loneliness find them. But few, if any, establish any kind of clear causal relationship. In general, people who are more lonely tend to spend more time online, including on websites offering tits or bets.

“I cannot comprehend the tidal wave of human misery that the ‘a casino in your pocket’ era of sports gambling is unleashing, will unleash,” Freddie deBoer just wrote as a tiny aside in another amazing essay of media criticism which inspired this tweet from myself:

Some even link sports betting debts to support for Trump. By contrast, porn use is associated with decreases in violence against women. Men who look at more porn are actually less sexist than men who look at less of it.

Listen, man. I’m a liberal. If you want to have a moral panic about your son’s too-tight trousers while you watch a lion eat his face off, I’m going to let you. But you’re not going to sit here on Beyonce’s internet and tell me the long hair is the bigger threat without me writing a long screed on why you’re objectively, measurably, factually wrong. Sorry.

As to what to do about gambling, I’m honestly not sure. Because I think it’s dumb and boring, I’ve barely thought about it before now. But as someone who cares a lot about boys and men, especially the young ones, I think people who also claim to care about them should probably spend a lot less time talking and thinking and worrying about porn and a lot more talking, thinking, and worrying about gambling. But, then again, I’m a weirdo who thinks facts should matter. And a thot. So what do I know.