When Rory McIlroy won the Masters for the second consecutive year, Kalshi posted a photo on Instagram with the caption, “Wait he’s goated.” Similarly, after a video of NBA star Damian Lillard recovering from an injury circulated online, Polymarket, Kalshi’s main competitor, commented, “The league is cooked.”
These posts, along with hundreds of others, are part of a strategy to expose younger audiences to prediction market platforms, where users can wager on real-world events—or absurd ones, such as when the U.S. will confirm alien existence or whether Jesus Christ will return before 2027. Once on the platforms, companies keep users engaged with what they market as low-stakes, casual opportunities to make quick money, creating an environment that some critics say feels more like a game than a risky financial transaction with potentially harmful consequences.
Recent academic research examining 588 million trades on Polymarket found that profits were concentrated among a small group of top traders, while the majority of users—69%—lost money. Kalshi, Polymarket, and some sports wagering platforms are available to users starting at 18, mirroring the minimum age for stock market investing but younger than the 21-year age limit for gambling in most U.S. states. This three-year gap is critical for cognitive development, experts warn, as teens and young adults are more vulnerable to developing problematic gambling behavior and addiction.
Expert Concerns and Legislative Action
“The adults in the room are not taking the fact this is meant to be an adult activity seriously, so when adults don’t take it seriously, why would the kids?” said Dr. Timothy Fong, an addiction psychiatrist and co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program. He noted that the “velocity of gambling” combined with “frictionless” access creates a dangerous slope for young people.
Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) recently introduced legislation to bar social media companies and advertisers from showing sports betting ads to minors. Blumenthal said sportsbooks and prediction markets are “treating young people like a gold rush, flooding the internet with advertisements and promotions to hook them on gambling when they’re young.”
Meme-Driven Marketing Tactics
The humorous, meme-driven approach by prediction markets and sports wagering platforms is not just for social media clout but a deliberate strategy to reach young people, according to Jason Levin, founder of Memelord Technologies. His company provides marketing tools like meme templates that both Polymarket and Kalshi have used. “If you want to attract a younger audience, you’re going to use memes. You’re going to use unhinged humor,” Levin said. “You’re going to try to get in front of them by any means necessary.”
One recent Polymarket ad on Meta’s platforms shows an influencer hanging off a hot air balloon before letting go and plummeting. Another from Kalshi features chimpanzees in suits at party settings. Fliff, a free-to-play platform calling itself a “social sportsbook,” uses a common meme template of a car speeding to exit a highway. Ads also appear on mobile games and other online spaces where young people congregate.
Kalshi spokesperson Jack Such told the Associated Press that memes are “just a part of corporate branding nowadays” and their usage isn’t necessarily linked to the age of viewers. The average age of a Kalshi user is 33, Such said. Polymarket declined to comment.
Youth Engagement and Financial Risks
About 3 in 10 American adults under 30 said they placed a sports bet in the past year, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in summer 2025. Approximately 2 in 10 Americans under 30—including 21% of men and 16% of women—reported wagering online in that period, up from 7% three years earlier.
Prediction markets distinguish themselves from gambling by emphasizing that users are making predictions on probable outcomes, not placing bets. Because they are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, they are not subject to state-level restrictions on gambling, including higher age limits. However, some online sports wagering platforms, like Fliff, are open to users starting at 18, operating on a sweepstakes-based model that doesn’t require payment but incentivizes it for real-money payouts.
Stephen Findeisen, a YouTuber known as Coffeezilla who investigates internet scams, said the motivation behind targeting young users is the potential for long-term customer loyalty. “If you’re one of these platforms, you are incentivized to try to target them as soon as you can get them as a customer, so you can be the first kind of business they engage with in that space,” he said. Many platforms offer low monetary entry points to “lower the friction of getting involved,” as “the hardest wager to get is the first wager.”
Paris Woods, an author and financial educator, emphasized that around age 18 is the most critical time to build financial stability and long-term wealth. Gambling and trading on prediction markets can create a “cycle of addiction and debt.” She added, “It’s not just eroding the present and taking their hard-earned money at 18 or 19, but it’s actually taking money out of that 40 or 50-year-old version of themselves.”
Gamification and Its Impact
Risky financial behaviors like sports wagering are reinforced by the rush of a win or the fun of the experience. Gamified features such as leaderboards, challenges, rewards, and other video game-like tools are built into some platforms, keeping users engaged longer and more intensely, said Adrian Hon, a game designer and author of “You’ve Been Played.” “They tighten the loop of setting a bet and getting the feedback,” Hon said. “And so it does make it more visceral. It makes it more exciting. It makes it more real-time.”
Fliff, for example, uses bright colors and engaging art. Users can customize avatars, write bios, gain followers, chat, move up leaderboards, and earn achievement badges. Fliff stated it provides a “fun, social and rewarding experience” for free-to-play games while taking measures for responsible use. The average age of a user who makes a purchase is 26, the company said. Kalshi and Polymarket also have leaderboards and comment sections with GIFs. Kalshi’s Such said these features help users trade with maximum information and are “core elements” of the platform. Kalshi has rejected proposals for more gamified elements like confetti on trade confirmations and has implemented safeguards such as live selfie requests and facial recognition to prevent underage access.
Intentional or not, wagering platforms expose young users to “highly stimulating, highly novel, highly intense things,” said Fong. “A young brain that’s not fully formed—that’s going to leave a significant mark. And that brain is going to want it again.”
