Loneliness and online gambling-community participation of young social media users

Abstract Individuals use online communities for social networking and to find similar others. These communities can be attractive for individuals who are dissatisfied with their offline relationships. This article reports two studies analyzing the daily participation in online gambling-communities. In Study 1, self-reported measures were used to examine the role of loneliness, excessive gambling, and Internet use in daily online gambling-community participation. In Study 2, a gambling-related vignette experiment was used to analyze how characteristics of online behavior predict daily online gambling-community participation. Both studies are based on three samples collected among Finnish ( N =  1200 and N =  230) and U.S. ( N =  1212) adolescents and young adults. In Finland and the U.S., daily online gambling-community participation was more likely among compulsive Internet users and individuals who gambled excessively. In Finland, loneliness moderated the effect between gambling problems and daily gambling-community participation, but in the U.S., loneliness had no moderating effect. Preferring pro-gambling to antigambling content also predicted more likely daily online gambling-community participation. Online gambling-communities are attractive for young individuals who experience gambling problems and are interested in gambling overall.