Ontario Teen Online Gambling Rose 50% Since Market Opened
Online gambling among Ontario teenagers has risen sharply since the province opened its regulated iGaming market, according to the latest Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey (OSDUHS), published by Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) on August 24.
The survey polled more than 11,000 students in grades 7 to 12 across the province.
The share of students reporting online gambling in the past year, including online sports betting, online poker and online casino games, rose to 12% from 8% two years ago, a 50% increase.
Online sports betting specifically rose to 10% in 2025 from just 1% in 2017, the first year CAMH began tracking it.
One in five students reported gambling of any kind, online or offline, in the past year, and about a quarter said they see or hear online gambling advertising on a daily basis.
Growth Among Younger Students And Girls
The survey also found that gambling is growing among groups that historically gambled less.
Six per cent of female students reported online gambling in the past year, double the rate from the previous survey.
Among eighth graders, the rate rose to 10% from 4.6% in 2023.
Ontario opened its regulated online gambling market to private operators in 2022, a year after the federal government legalised single-event sports betting.
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Alberta Researcher Expects A Similar Pattern
Carrie Shaw, chair of the Alberta Gambling Research Institute at the University of Alberta, said the same trend is likely to play out in Alberta, which became the second Canadian province to open a regulated iGaming market when it launched in July 2026.
"There is nothing that would suggest that we won't experience the same thing," Shaw said. "If we're taking a look at the very same open market, the very same advertising, we should expect the same outcome will occur."
Shaw credited Alberta's centralized self-exclusion system, which covers both land-based and online gambling, as an improvement on Ontario's system, where self-exclusion timers vary by platform.
