A research team at Samsung Medical Center has confirmed that online gambling is three times more addictive than offline gambling for teenagers.

The research came amid the rising trend of teen gambling addiction in Korea.

According to data released Rep. Kim Do-eup of the ruling People Power Party, the number of adolescents receiving medical treatment for gambling has been increasing rapidly every year.

The number of cases has nearly tripled in five years, from 837 in 2017 to 2,269 as of 2021.

Notably, the report showed that teen gambling addiction has exploded due to social distancing rules during the Covid-19 pandemic, as the figure in 2021 is a 42 percent increase from the previous year.

The report said that online gambling is the biggest contributor to the rise in youth gambling addiction as the Covid-19 pandemic has made teenagers more dependent on the internet and smartphones, making it easier for them to indulge in gambling like a game.

To get a firm grasp of how much online gambling affects teenagers, the team, led by Professors Baek Ji-Hyun and Joung Yoo-sook of the Department of Psychiatry at Samsung Medical Center, analyzed the results of a survey of 5,619 adolescents who had received treatment at a Korean Problem Gambling Prevention and Treatment Center as of 2018.

Professor Oh Yun-hye of the Department of Psychiatry at Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital also participated in the study.

The survey asked a total of nine questions about adolescent gambling symptoms, including skipping or dropping out of activities, not hanging out with friends who don't gamble, planning to gamble, feeling bad, going back another day to try to win, hiding gambling activities from others, feeling that gambling is a problem, using pocket money for lunch or clothes to gamble, and stealing money to gamble.

Each question was scored for severity to create the Gambling Problem Severity Scale.

Survey participants were divided into online and offline gambling groups based on their gambling exposure.

After analyzing the survey, the team confirmed that the online group's severity score was three times higher than that of the offline group.

The researchers found that stealing money was a major symptom of adolescent gambling, and the next major symptom, skipping or quitting activities, was also an impulsivity-based symptom.

The team said that these symptoms can be seen as a precursor to early school dropout or withdrawal.

As the online group's gambling addiction was more severe than the offline group, the symptom characteristics also differed.

One of the central symptoms of online gambling was that gambling made them feel bad. Studies of online gambling and similar online gaming addictions typically found that patients were also depressed.

The online groups were also characterized by a lack of socialization with non-gambling peers, which, due to the solitary nature of online gambling, led to social withdrawal.

"Gambling addiction can be difficult to detect until adolescents seek treatment due to overt behavioral problems such as stealing and missing school," the team said. "Through this study, we were able to analyze the funnel and psychological characteristics of adolescent gambling to identify detailed symptoms."

It is expected to help set more effective treatment directions for adolescent gambling addicts in the future, the team added.

Psychiatry Investigation published the results of the study.