Online betting: one in four teenagers in Argentina has already bet, and early gambling access is becoming harder to ignore

Jonathan Gómez’s public account of gambling addiction put a familiar problem back in plain sight: losses, debt, family damage, and professional uncertainty. The part that matters for PSPs and operators is that the path to problem gambling now starts much earlier, and often on the same phone a teenager uses for school, social media, and football highlights.

1. According to Kids Online Argentina 2025, a survey by UNICEF and UNESCO, one in four Argentine teenagers said they had bet online at least once, and the average age of first betting is around 13 years old. Sports betting is among the most common formats.
2. Daniela Blanco, speaking on Infobae al Mediodía, described the shift from traditional gambling to mobile betting as a structural change: gambling is no longer tied to a physical venue with entry controls, but sits on the device itself, available 24 hours a day. Her point was blunt: the barrier has moved from the door of a casino to a screen that is always open.
3. The mechanism is the part operators know too well. A person bets, loses, and can place another bet within seconds. In the digital environment, money stops feeling like cash and becomes a balance on a screen, which makes the “chase” loop easier to repeat and harder to interrupt.
4. Blanco’s warning was not about adult problem gambling in the abstract. It was about access. If a betting platform is present on the same phone a teenager uses to scroll, chat, watch videos, or follow a match, the funnel into gambling starts much earlier than the old casino model ever allowed.