Teenagers addicted to gambling are caught in a vicious cycle of debt, with some turning to private loans to repay what they owe.
A recent report titled “A Study on the Actual Conditions of Youth Cyber Gambling Experiences” by Lim Ji-yeon, a senior research fellow at the National Youth Policy Institute, found that 12.7 percent of 520 teenagers aged 13 to 19 who engaged in online gambling last year had borrowed money through illegal online loans or high-interest loans from friends to pay off gambling debts.
The report also found that many teenagers engaged in illegal activities to pay off gambling debts, including illegal gambling (57.7 percent), fraud (36.2 percent), theft (22.2 percent), selling personal information (14.3 percent),…