What Christian Parents Should Know About Sports Betting

Gambling, ,

The group Axis recently released a video highlighting how sports betting is harmful — especially for teenage boys.

Axis provides videos and resources designed to help parents have gospel-centered conversations with their children about faith and culture. Their recent video helps parents understand how sportsbook apps turn sports fans into gamblers and why young men are especially vulnerable.

Nationwide, sports betting is legal in 39 states — including Arkansas, where people are on track to wager nearly a billion dollars this year on sports betting alone. But a growing body of evidence shows this type of gambling is causing serious harm — especially to teens and young adults.

Studies show people who gamble on sports may be twice as likely to suffer from gambling problems. When sports gambling happens online, the rate is even higher.

Experts estimate more than half of men ages 18 – 49 now have an active sportsbook account online. While not all of these people may suffer from gambling problems, bankruptcy attorneys across the country say online sports betting is driving a surge in personal bankruptcies among young adults in their 20s and 30s.

Twenty-year-old males account for approximately 40% of calls to gambling addiction hotlines, and upwards of 20 million men are in debt or have been in debt as a result of sports betting.

In 2024, the Arkansas Problem Gambling Council announced it had seen a 22% increase in calls for help with problem gambling — driven largely by sports betting.

And a 2025 survey found one in four sports bettors worry that they cannot control their gambling. Some studies have also linked legal sports betting to increases in divorce, binge drinking, domestic violence, and violent crime.

It’s time to admit that the national experiment with sports betting has failed. The cost of sports betting isn’t just measured in dollars and cents. It’s also measured in human lives.

On the whole, most Americans do not believe sports betting has been good for society or good for sports. The NFL and sportsbooks have actually faced consumer protection lawsuits over the harm that gambling causes.

As powerful corporations try to make gambling part of everyday life, it’s important for Arkansas to protect its citizens and families from predatory gambling. Otherwise gambling addiction will simply continue wreaking havoc and hurting families in our state.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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State of Arkansas, Snap Go Back and Forth in Court

Social Media,

The State of Arkansas and social media company Snap are still going back and forth in court over a consumer protection lawsuit Attorney General Tim Griffin filed in June.

Snap’s Snapchat app lets users send photos and videos — called “Snaps” — that automatically disappear after being viewed. As of 2026, the platform boasts an estimated 493 million active daily users — many of whom are teenagers.

But the social media app has been at the center of multiple controversies regarding sexting and grooming.

In a lawsuit filed on June 23, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin alleged Snapchat exploits young users and exposes them to dangers like “sextortion rings, predatory grooming, violent content, illegal drug marketplaces, unrealistic beauty standards, and an untested My AI chatbot that delivers dangerous and inappropriate advice to minors.”

The attorney general’s team says Snap has failed to provide “even basic safeguards” for kids.

In response, Snap successfully moved the lawsuit from state court to federal court. The company has filed court documents indicating it participates in programs designed to educate people about digital safety and protect kids online. The case is currently before Judge Brian Miller, whom President George W. Bush appointed to the federal court in 2008.

Attorney General Griffin has asked Judge Miller to remand the case to state court.

The lawsuit against Snap is similar to other lawsuits Attorney General Griffin has filed against social media companies.

In 2023, Attorney General Griffin sued Meta — the company that owns Facebook and Instagram — for intentionally designing its social media platforms “to exploit human psychology and foster addiction to maximize users’ screen time.”

Meta recently resolved that lawsuit as part of a $17 billion settlement the company reached with dozens of attorneys general from around the country.

In 2023, Attorney General Griffin also filed two lawsuits against ByteDance — the company that owns TikTok.

Those legal complaints call the TikTok app “a Chinese ‘Trojan Horse’ unleashed on unsuspecting American consumers.” The A.G.’s team says that TikTok deceptively labeled its app as being appropriate for ages 13 and up when it really should have been rated 17+. Attorney General Griffin’s office is still actively pursuing its lawsuits against TikTok in Arkansas court.

A growing body of evidence shows that social media platforms may deliberately addict users, promote objectionable content, and put people’s personal information at risk. Parents need to understand what these platforms may be doing to children.

Social media platforms are more than just phone apps or websites.

These are multibillion-dollar businesses with CEOs, boards of directors, investors, and development teams. The adults who profit from these businesses need to be held accountable when they harm innocent people — especially teens.

Children deserve proactive protection online. If tech companies won’t protect children, then voters and policymakers must do it.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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Two More Hospitals Agree to Stop Performing Sex-Change Procedures on Children

Transgender, ,

The federal government is continuing to shut down gender clinics that perform dangerous, irreversible sex-change procedures on children.

Over the past 20 years, the number of children who identify as transgender has skyrocketed — especially among biological girls.

Many hospitals opened “gender clinics” that prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to kids or even performed sex-change surgeries on children. But since then, public health experts and policymakers in the U.S., the U.K., Sweden, Finland, and other nations have found that science simply does not support these “gender transitions.”

Now state and federal officials are taking serious steps to protect children and shutter these “gender clinics.”

On September 18, the U.S. Department of Justice announced New York University Langone Hospitals (NYU) and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) — two of the nation’s largest healthcare systems — have agreed to stop subjecting children to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries. The agreement resolves federal investigations into the facilities.

This is really good news.

Puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change procedures carry serious risks — like infertility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density, and cardiovascular problems.

Today we know pro-LGBT activists and medical organizations spent years citing each other’s work in a circular pattern, manufacturing a fake consensus about performing sex-change surgeries on kids.

Investigators have alleged that some of the healthcare professionals who performed these procedures may have committed insurance fraud to improperly profit from what they were doing.

Whistleblowers have come forward to testify about how they were rushed through gender transitions as children without understanding the procedures’ risks, consequences, or alternatives.

Stories like these have prompted investigations and legal action against doctors and facilities that performed these procedures on children.

In 2021, Arkansas’ lawmakers passed the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act. This good law generally prohibits doctors from performing sex-change procedures on children or giving them puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

Arkansas was the first state in America to enact a law like the SAFE Act, but since 2021 lawmakers in more than half the country have passed similar legislation. Federal courts have upheld the SAFE Act and other state laws like it as constitutional.

Arkansans should be proud that their state has been a leader when it comes to protecting children from dangerous sex-change procedures.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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