Sport betting addiction among young Nigerians: Is social media advertising subtly baiting youths to gamble?

https://doi.org/10.51867/ajernet.6.3.14

Authors

Keywords:

Betting, Gambling Addiction, Online Gambling, Online Advertising, Social Media, Sport Betting

Abstract

Social media has continued to be the definer of new culture in the contemporary society. As the spread of digital revolution continues to gain traction, new behaviour and accompanying challenges are bound to ensure, one of such social anomalies is the prevalence of online sport gambling. Youths, particularly have been noted to be regular patrons of sport gambling in Nigeria, resulting into worrisome endemic level of gambling addiction among the young population, especially in Nigeria. This study specifically aims to examine the influence of sport betting advertising on social media on youths’ gambling addiction. The social norm theory was found to be appropriate for this work. A total of three research questions were formulated to be able to investigate this phenomenon. The study adopted survey design using online Google form to reach 385 respondents selected from Lagos. The analysis of data for this study was done using the SPSS packages and results were presented simple percentages and charts. The findings revealed that 80.5% of the respondents agreed that online sport betting has been popularised by social media advertising. Also, 96.6% of the total sample size, agreed that, many youths have become addicted, as they are urged to gamble due to the pervasive social media sport betting promotions. Among others, the study recommends that advertising on social media should reflect age restriction and warning messages about sport betting; policies and control measures be put in place to dictate ethical boundaries for online sport gambling.

Dimensions

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Published

2025-07-10

How to Cite

Michael, O. peter, Ogunmusire, A., Akinwumi, E., Onifade, A., & Oniwon, G. (2025). Sport betting addiction among young Nigerians: Is social media advertising subtly baiting youths to gamble?. African Journal of Empirical Research, 6(3), 166–175. https://doi.org/10.51867/ajernet.6.3.14

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 3 (2025): Jul-Sep 2025

Section

Articles
Copyright & Licensing

Copyright (c) 2025 Ogbemudia peter Michael, Bisi Ogunmusire, Eniola Akinwumi, Ayokunle Onifade, Godwin Oniwon

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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