{"id":469568,"date":"2026-05-05T13:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T13:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/469568\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T13:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T13:48:13","slug":"the-atlantics-viral-gambling-app-story-was-reckless-and-dangerous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/469568\/","title":{"rendered":"The Atlantic\u2019s viral gambling-app story was reckless and dangerous."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, a friend sent me a text that read, \u201cThe Atlantic gave a journalist $10k to gamble on sports betting apps to see how it affected him. I\u2019m pretty sure they just created a gambling addict.\u201d It seemed like a weird thing for the Atlantic to do in the year 2026, like a story from a bygone era, maybe something in Vice of the \u201cI Tried Out Herbal Club Drugs, and It Was a Nightmare\u201d variety. Surely, I thought, there must be something to the Atlantic\u2019s piece that made it less reckless than it sounded.<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t. Published under the headline \u201cSucker: My Year as a Degenerate Gambler<\/a>,\u201d Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins chronicles his foray into the booming world of sports betting apps. A practicing Mormon, Coppins had no previous experience with gambling but quickly learned how easily the \u201cjoyful naivete\u201d of his initial use \u201ccould curdle into delusion and compulsion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coppins is an excellent writer; the story compellingly highlights the perils of having 24\/7 access to tiny electronic casinos in our pockets and the seductive allure of betting on anything and everything. Ninety percent of bets are now placed on phones; the proliferation of these apps makes it easier than ever to develop a gambling addiction (or gambling disorder, as it\u2019s called in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), a condition that can have catastrophic and even lethal consequences for a person\u2019s life. As Coppins notes in the piece, 1 in 5 people with gambling disorder will attempt suicide, a higher rate than with any substance use disorder.<\/p>\n

The story immediately struck a nerve among vocal gamblers who criticized Coppins\u2019 sports-betting naivete and called the article a \u201chit piece.\u201d Among nongamblers, the story was simply a hit. Praised by scores of journalists, Coppins made the rounds on PBS\u2019s Amanpour & Company, NPR\u2019s Fresh Air, CBS Mornings, and the Ringer\u2019s Plain English With Derek Thompson. In each of these interviews, Coppins reiterates his thesis about the addictive nature of gambling apps and why we should take this exploding market seriously.<\/p>\n

In a stark contrast to Coppins\u2019 message, the Atlantic\u2019s editors appeared to treat the endeavor as an entertaining, lighthearted stunt. \u201cI think my editors thought there was something inherently funny about taking a suburban Mormon dad and dropping him into this world,\u201d Coppins told Thompson on the Plain English<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\n

Certainly, Coppins\u2019 participation was something the editors wanted from the beginning; after taking on the story, the writer began outlining whom he would interview for the piece. Coppins told Thompson that his editor suggested, \u201cIt would really be better if you had a little skin in the game, experienced it firsthand.\u201d<\/p>\n

After informing his editors that, as well as alcohol, Coppins\u2019 religion prohibits gambling, they came up with a work-around. Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic\u2019s editor in chief, suggested \u201cstaking\u201d Coppins $10,000 so he wouldn\u2019t be betting with his own money.<\/p>\n

I am not religious, I don\u2019t gamble, and my sports knowledge begins with Simone Biles and ends with Alyssa Liu. Nothing about a sports-betting Mormon offends me. I think drugs\u2014like any potentially addictive thing\u2014should be legal and regulated. But I\u2019m also a recovering alcoholic who has been researching and writing about addiction for more than a decade. I\u2019m all too aware of how quickly behavior can turn compulsive and how even the most temperate individual can unknowingly find themselves in over their head. The piece had all the hallmarks of a splashy and ultimately viral story. But funding a nongambler\u2019s entrance into the gambling world as a kind of comedic protagonist not only puts the writer at risk but also flattens the seriousness of the story\u2019s subject.<\/p>\n

Consider an alternative scenario: Coppins\u2019 editors want him to report on the most widely used<\/a> intoxicant in the United States\u2014alcohol. Knowing that he has no experience with it\u2014what addiction researchers call being \u201calcohol-naive\u201d\u2014the editors give him a case of liquor for a journalistic experiment. He has to drink at least some of the alcohol provided, but he ultimately gets to decide how much. Then, he\u2019ll report on what it was like going from teetotaler to drinker. Having this firsthand experience, they tell him, will put him in a better position to report on the country\u2019s alcohol consumption.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to brush off the hypothetical: Substance use and gambling aren\u2019t inherently comparable. But that\u2019s effectively what the Atlantic did with Coppins. Developing an addiction to either alcohol or gambling is entirely possible; gambling disorder is the only behavioral (i.e., nonsubstance) addiction recognized in the DSM. And like alcohol, betting apps are legal for most adults in the United States, readily accessible, and popular.<\/p>\n

Since Coppins\u2019 religion prohibits alcohol and gambling, it\u2019s fair to assume he has as little experience with one as the other. This matters because whether someone develops an addiction depends at least as much on who they are as on what they\u2019re consuming, and there\u2019s no way to predict how Coppins will respond because he likely had never gambled at that level before. Finding that out is, after all, the point of the story. Ultimately, whether it\u2019s a case of liquor or $10K in gambling money, a writer\u2019s employer encouraged him to engage in addictive behaviors with which he had no previous experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think people would respond the same way to this story if you gave [Coppins] alcohol or a bottle of Xanax,\u201d Ryan Marino, a physician specializing in addiction medicine, medical toxicology, and emergency medicine, told me. \u201cBut that speaks more to public perception than a real difference between the two; there is a definite disorder associated with gambling, and the diagnostic criteria we use for gambling disorder are very, very similar to those we use for drug addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, part of what makes the story so engaging is how open Coppins is about his escalating behavior. When he asks Craig Carton, the host of a call-in show about gambling addiction, what warning signs a new gambler should watch for, Carton promptly relays a list of questions on the DSM criteria for gambling disorder. Are you going to sleep and waking up thinking about your bets? Are you \u201cchasing\u201d\u2014making reckless new bets to win back the money you lost? Are you placing bets on your phone in the bathroom so your family doesn\u2019t see you gambling?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have to wonder why Coppins describes these questions as making him shift \u201cuncomfortably in my seat\u201d; he\u2019s already told us that the answer to these questions is yes.<\/p>\n

By Week 7, Coppins writes that he is \u201csurprised at how quickly and extensively the experiment [is] bleeding into the rest of my life.\u201d Six weeks later, he experiences his \u201cfirst bout of gambling withdrawal.\u201d Unable to place bets while in Florida with his family, Coppins realizes he can\u2019t get excited about a football game because he can\u2019t bet on it.<\/p>\n

The only time in the story Coppins mentions an editor taking an interest in his mental health occurs four months into the \u201cexperiment.\u201d The writer\u2019s co-workers begin to notice his \u201ctwitchiness\u201d around betting apps, and Goldberg allegedly becomes concerned about Coppins\u2019 mental health. The EIC\u2019s suggested remedy? That the writer \u201clog off and touch felt.\u201d<\/p>\n

By \u201ctouch felt,\u201d Goldberg means that Coppins should get on a plane to Las Vegas and place bets in real life. That\u2019s right; the editor\u2019s response to his ostensible concern about his employee\u2019s declining mental health and assignment-induced fixation on betting apps is to send him to the gambling capital of the country with Tom Nichols, \u201ca professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College and a blackjack obsessive.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Marino, that decision is \u201clike trying to get someone off heroin by switching to morphine.\u201d When Coppins returns to the newsroom after his Vegas education, Goldberg asks about the writer\u2019s losses and jokes that the future of the publication depends on Coppins winning big. Even the piece\u2019s title (\u201cSucker: My Year as a Degenerate Gambler\u201d) is decidedly tongue-in-cheek. Yet this frivolity is incongruous with the seriousness of a story about an addiction that drives 1 in 5 people to attempt suicide.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as though this information was unavailable to Coppins\u2019 editors. A Commission review published in the Lancet<\/a> in 2024 notes that \u201conline gambling products are designed to be rapid and intensive, characteristics that are associated with higher risk of harm for consumers,\u201d and estimates that 8.9\u00a0percent of the adults and 16.3\u00a0percent of the adolescents who gamble using sports-betting products will develop gambling disorder. Even those who don\u2019t meet the clinical criteria are at risk. The same review finds that \u201ca substantial proportion of harm is suffered by those individuals who fall below the threshold for gambling disorders.<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s a gap between public perception of gambling and reality. A 2025 survey<\/a> by the National Council on Problem Gambling found that only 39\u00a0percent of Americans view gambling addiction as \u201cvery serious,\u201d compared to 62\u00a0percent for drug addiction and 55\u00a0percent for alcoholism. Research suggests that this gap is due partially to gambling being an easier addiction to hide than addictions to substances, something Coppins notes in the story. \u201cThe addict doesn\u2019t have glazed eyes or slurred speech, and no one can smell it on him,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n

Betting apps also seem to be in their surgeon general cigarette-ad era. Athletes so famous even I\u2019ve heard of them (Lebron James, Rob Gronkowski, the Manning brothers, and Tom Brady, to name a few) and celebrities like Kevin Hart and Kendall Jenner all feature prominently in ads for betting apps, undeniably contributing to their normalization.<\/p>\n

Michael Ostacher, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, told me that it felt as though the editors thought Coppins\u2019 intelligence, talent, and otherwise sober demeanor would inoculate the writer from potential harm.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like, \u2018Ha ha, you\u2019re not going to be the one who gets in trouble with this because you\u2019re McKay Coppins,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Ostacher told me. \u201cMaybe that turns out to be true for him. But you just never know\u00a0\u2026 there\u2019s no guarantee of coming back.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible\u2014even likely\u2014that some of what occurs in the story is exaggerated for dramatic effect. Certainly, everyone involved is an adult and can make their own decisions. We also don\u2019t know everything that happened behind the scenes. Perhaps the editors constantly checked in with Coppins about his mental health. Perhaps the writer was eager for firsthand experience with betting apps and asked his editors to find a spiritual workaround. If that\u2019s the case, it\u2019s unfortunate they declined to include those details in the story. Because what we\u2019re left with is a piece that asks us to take the problem seriously while the publication demonstrably does not.<\/p>\n

One hopes that such an experiment would be undertaken to reveal something we don\u2019t already know. The addictive potential of gambling is well established. There\u2019s plenty of research into betting apps that tells us what we already know\u2014ease of access and immediate gratification amplify the addictive potential of a substance or behavior. By design, betting apps provide plenty of both.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get that he\u2019s an adult and gave his consent, but it\u2019s still reasonable to question the ethics of doing this without any real purpose,\u201d said Marino. Coppins\u2019 editors \u201cdidn\u2019t even try to intervene or get him help; it seemed like they just hoped that his being a Mormon who wasn\u2019t using his own money would protect him from gambling addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I asked Eric Deggans, the Knight Chair of Journalism and Media Ethics at Washington and Lee University, about the ethics of the story, he stopped short of calling it unethical but noted that encouraging a reporter to engage in risky personal behavior to produce a first-person story is a type of journalism he\u2019s \u201cgenerally skeptical of.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ethics, he told me, come down to whether the publication evaluated the risk enough to know if the story was worth doing in the first place, and if so, \u201cwhat safeguards are in place if the reporter gets in too deep.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Alex Kirshner
\n He Was One of College Football\u2019s Biggest Stars. Schools Paid Him Millions. It Just Ended for the Dumbest Reason.
\n Read More<\/b>\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to hear that [the editors] checked in with [Coppins] regularly to make sure he was OK while he was doing this, and if they didn\u2019t, then I think that\u2019s a lapse on their part,\u201d Deggans said.<\/p>\n

Coppins, Goldberg, and The Atlantic for the piece all declined to comment when I reached out to them for this story.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n <\/p>\n

    I\u2019ve Researched and Written About Addiction for Years. I\u2019m Appalled by the Atlantic\u2019s Viral Gambling Story.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    But there are undeniably warring interests that complicate the publication\u2019s motivation. If the reporter doesn\u2019t make it through the extreme situation (ideally with dramatic results), there\u2019s no story. Abandoning a feature cover story after months of reporting and a $10,000 investment is a tall order for any publication; I can\u2019t help but wonder how obviously bad Coppins\u2019 mental health would have to become to warrant that.<\/p>\n

    For Marino, the ends simply don\u2019t justify the means. \u201cIf you\u2019re just saying that gambling apps are bad, OK, nine out of 10 people would probably agree. They didn\u2019t offer any solutions, they didn\u2019t intervene to see if [Coppins] needed help,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the point was to say that gambling apps are addictive, it makes it even more unethical; there was no purpose other than to get people to read the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

    In that respect, the piece was an unbridled success, as Deggans was quick to remind me. \u201cWe\u2019re in a media universe where the results carry a lot of weight,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be hard to make the case that this was ill-advised because the story turned out so well.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Deggans does have some uncertainty about the story\u2014and some questions he\u2019s curious to ask. \u201cI\u2019d be interested to know if [Coppins] is still feeling the effects of working on the story,\u201d Deggans said. He paused and thought for a moment before adding, \u201cAnd I wonder if his editors are checking in on him now that it\u2019s over.\u201d<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

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