Understanding gambling addiction in the digital era: What online play reveals

Digital gambling platforms provide an unprecedented opportunity to study addictive behaviors in real-world conditions through large-scale behavioral tracking. Between-session chasing—returning to gamble more rapidly after previous gains or losses—emerges as a hallmark of gambling escalation and a promising target for early detection. Using digital play data, including findings from our own work, we observed a robust win-chasing effect: gamblers tended to return more quickly after wins than after losses. Importantly, this relationship was moderated by gambling involvement. While most gamblers primarily chased wins as a form of reward-seeking (“to feel better”), highly involved gamblers showed reduced differentiation between outcomes, suggesting a stronger sensitivity to losses, possibly as a way to relieve negative affect (“to feel good”).

These converging mechanisms may sustain persistent engagement in digital gambling. A central open question is whether, in vulnerable individuals, gambling behavior becomes increasingly decoupled from outcome-based expectations—a shift consistent with habit formation. Early identification of these behavioral signatures, together with a better understanding of the underlying motivational processes and individual differences, may inform the development of more effective and personalized prevention strategies. Such approaches could specifically target chasing and the earliest stages of escalation in online gambling behavior.

To be updated shortly..