Hi. I’m Brittney S., the junior editor of WannaBet: An Online Magazine for Kids Concerned about Gambling. A few months ago, we wanted to find out students’ understanding of what ‘gambling’ is vs. what ‘betting’ is. So I asked.

This past spring I distributed a survey among fellow students at my school. It seemed a little disorganized to just stand at the corner and hand them out, so I thought, “There must be a better way.” Then I remembered that the year before in my health class we had discussed gambling, among other similar topics. I thought that would be the perfect place to issue them because the students in the health class would have some knowledge on the topic, and maybe they would have already formed their own views on gambling or betting.

After making a sufficient amount of surveys, I consulted the health teacher and principal and was granted permission to hand out the surveys. Here are the results of the survey:

Activity	Gambling	Betting
Playing cards (poker) for money*	94	14
Playing pool or billiards for money*	55	51
Sports betting (high school/college)*	19	86
Sports betting (professional)*	26	79
Sports betting (any type) with bookie*	49	58
Shooting baskets for money*	56	52
Playing Fantasy Football for money*	66	40
Internet games of chance for money	80	24
Lottery tickets or scratch-off tickets	94	10
Playing slot machines	97	7
Playing craps or roulette*	92	13
* denotes that a number of students chose both 'Gambling' and 'Betting' for that question.

As I looked at the results of the survey, it seemed to me that most of the students had pretty much agreed on what they considered gambling and what they considered betting. Generally, betting on all levels of sports is considered betting, except for betting on yourself as you play which was considered gambling. All of the card and casino games, lottery tickets and chance games were labeled gambling by the majority of the students.

As you can see from the results, many students answered that they thought the examples were both betting and gambling (indicated by the asterisk at the end). The dictionary defines both gambling and betting as “risking a sum of money.” So really, as long as you have something at stake, you are gambling.