The Indonesian Minister of Communication and Information (Menkominfo) stated that up to 197,054 Indonesian minors are addicted to online gambling, based on data from the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) for the year 2024.
According to PPATK data, there are 197,054 cases of online gambling addiction among Indonesian minors, with ages ranging from 11 to 19 years old.
Based on this data, minors addicted to online gambling have conducted online gambling transactions totaling 293 billion Indonesian Rupiah, with a total of 2.2 million transactions.
He also mentioned that a high divorce rate is due to people's addiction to online gambling, based on data compiled by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), which will be reported in 2024. From the existing data, since 2019, the divorce rate due to online gambling has remained high.
The increase in online gambling addiction could have various social and economic impacts, such as an increase in the divorce rate based on issues related to online gambling addiction, with 1,947 divorce cases in 2019 due to online gambling. The divorce rate decreased in 2020 (648 cases), but this number significantly increased again in 2023, reaching 1,572 cases.
Countries around the world have also felt the negative impacts of online gambling, such as in the UK, where online gambling has caused the formal economic sector to lose potential. Between 2016 and 2022, UK online gamblers spent an average of 5.6 billion USD per year on online gambling, resulting in a loss of 1.7 billion USD to the UK economy.
Since the legalization of online gambling activities in 2018, not only in England but also in the US, the impact of online gambling has been felt. Due to the financial deterioration in states where online gambling is legal, some states have seen a 30% increase in the number of business bankruptcies.
