Watching winning : vicarious exposure to gambling wins through gambling streams in young adults

Gambling streams have proliferated in recent years. Streaming content is often edited into short-form highlight clips. In gambling streams, these clips are disproportionately skewed to portray large wins on slot machines and streamers’ intense emotional reactions. This content is not representative of true gambling odds, raising concerns regarding the potential harm of young adults’ exposure to glamorized gambling as entertainment. In Study 1, we surveyed UBC undergraduate students to investigate the mediums through which people consume gambling stream content. Results showed that the most frequently engaged format was highlight clips on social media. In Study 2, we conducted a pre-registered experimental study to investigate the impact of watching gambling clips featuring large wins, compared to realistic (‘neutral’) outcomes. We recruited an online sample of young adult gambling stream viewers without problem gambling. We measured participants’ gambling attitude, gambling intention, and judgements of winning probability, and assessed changes immediately after watching the clips and at a 1-month follow-up. ANCOVA did not reveal any significant between-group differences on the gambling measures. Analyses of affect ratings to the clips showed that participants reported negative valence after watching clips in both conditions, and significantly lower levels of arousal after viewing the winning clips compared to the neutral clips. These findings highlight the exposure to unregulated, high-intensity gambling content through social media. Gambling outcomes presented in a clips format precipitated differing emotional experiences, although we did not observe any indication of either immediate or delayed effects on measures relating to gambling. Our findings pertain to young adults without problem gambling. Future work is needed to examine the impact of long-term repeated exposure to gambling clips, especially for minors and individuals with problem gambling.