The normalisation of gambling: Growing up as an affected other

For some, gambling is colourful flashing lights. For me, it was background noise.  

I grew up around gambling – the thunder of a machine after a row of four, the relieved cheers or disappointed sighs that followed the weekly food shop. The coins that slip quietly back into a pocket. It was always there, humming in the background of family life, shaping an environment without ever being named. 

I was six when I became aware of what gambling is. It was framed positively to me as ‘just a bit of entertainment’. Harmless even. It wasn’t really a risk but more of a routine. 

As a child, you don’t question gambling – you just see it as a thing that adults do. It was only as a teenager that I realised not every adult gambles. Not every household is built around chance. Not every child grows up learning that money can disappear as easily as it arrives. I realised how invisible gambling had been in my life – not because it wasn’t present, but because it was a constant. 

Money management became something that I had to teach myself. In my experience, it wasn’t meaningfully built into education or modelled at home. I knew how a fruit machine sounded when it paid out long before I knew how a savings account worked. 

For children surrounded by gambling, exposure happens early and embeds itself. Gambling isn’t something you are suddenly exposed to – it’s something that you grow up alongside. 

Quite a lot is spoken about those experiencing gambling harms directly, but for their children and family the conversation can be incredibly quiet. It begins with exposure and repetition – seeing something so often that it stops being unusual. But normal does not mean harmless, and familiar does not always mean safe.  

Becoming a Ygam ambassador was the first time I was given language for something that I had lived with my entire life. It didn’t change the past, but it changed how I understood it. Awareness is a powerful thing.   

Through Ygam’s work educating and raising awareness about gambling harms, young people like me are given the knowledge and space to talk honestly about their experiences growing up around gambling. It also means young people are more able to recognise that these experiences aren’t and shouldn’t be normal life.  

Gambling no longer just lives on street corners or on illicit websites; it now exists in every pocket. At university, I realised what had been so familiar to me growing up had simply changed shape.  

It was no longer as obvious, but it was everywhere: roulette played during lectures, conversations over coffee about loot boxes in video games, and betting on football in pubs. I have seen how this once quiet risk has now become routine for so many people. 

Looking back, I didn’t reach out to external support services at the time. Like many young people, I relied on peers and simply carried the experience with me, quietly. It was only later, through volunteering with Ygam that I began to reflect and find the language for what I had seen growing up.  

For me, volunteering with Ygam is about taking something that shaped my childhood and choosing to face it with honesty, rather than silence. Being part of this work means I’m no longer just someone who lived through it, I’m someone who can help create change because of it. There’s a real sense of purpose in knowing that my voice, and my experiences, might help protect someone else.

Childhood is not supposed to revolve around chance. And recognising the signs and talking about it is the first step in preventing other young people from having the same experiences as me.

Ygam’s Silence the Stigma campaign enables students to spot signs of gambling harms both in themselves and others. It gives young people the tools to talk about these harms and shares details of useful support services that you can access if worried about yourself or concerned about someone you know.