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As someone who appreciates the freedoms I enjoy, I try to not step on the freedoms of others. That’s why I try to “live and let live,” which the dictionary defines as “tolerating the opinions and behavior of others so that they will similarly tolerate your own.”
At the same time, it’s only natural that many of us get more resistant to change as we get older, especially on cultural issues. When I was 30, I was quick to say change is inevitable and embrace progress; however, the me at 60 wonders why we’ve tried to fix some things that weren’t broken.
Take gambling. When I was growing up, you couldn’t even mention the odds of professional and college sporting events on the air or in newspapers unless you were in Las Vegas or Atlantic City – and plenty of players paid a serious price for getting involved with it over the years.
Eight Chicago White Sox players were in the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, conspiring with gamblers to intentionally lose the World Series, leading to their permanent ban from Major League Baseball. In 1963, two future National Football League Hall of Famers – Alex Karas and Paul Hornung – were suspended for an entire season over gambling concerns.
All-time hit king Pete Rose was banned from baseball for life on Aug. 23, 1989, as punishment for betting on baseball games while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds. And the National Basketball Association is facing an ongoing betting scandal involving federal indictments in late 2025 and early 2026 against current and former players, coaches and associates, who allegedly used insider information to gain betting profits.
After all that, I can’t get online or stream a single show today without being bombarded with ads for sports books like Draft Kings, Fan Duel or Underdog, all that promise free bets if you take the time to sign up and play as little as $5. Then there’s the latest casino app that promises to pay out cash, even though they don’t run ads and you can play offline, which is a mighty peculiar business plan.
How much money are Americans gambling online? While final nationwide figures for 2025 are still emerging, one source suggests that the total money wagered on U.S. sports was on pace to total around $164 billion. Closer to home, bettors in North Carolina placed more than $7 billion in online bets in the program’s first year of existence.
The American Gaming Association says in the first 10 months of 2025, bettors lost $13 billion. Sure, some professional gamblers are savvy enough to come out in the black, but for the vast majority placing bets is a fast track into the red.
How much good could that money have done if it actually went toward something that really matters? That’s a question for which we’ll never know the answer. Meanwhile, 800-GAMBLER helplines are experiencing high volume, and 10% of men ages 18-30 say they have a gambling problem, compared to only 3% of the overall population.
Then there are the ads for chatbots run by artificial intelligence. I realize AI has the capacity to do much good, but that good isn’t going to come from having a boy or girl who looks underage staring at the camera longingly while asking, “Are you up?” Another commercial features what appears to be the naked silhouette of a woman dancing suggestively to the words, “This is what happens every time I try to put down my AI chatbot,” adding that there are, “No restrictions!”
In 2025, time spent on AI chatbots surged, with the top 10 platforms capturing more than 55.88 billion visits, a 123% year-over-year growth. Meanwhile, the share of adults who are married – or even in committed long-term relationships – is at historic lows. Will the next generation even know how to properly communicate with others after becoming addicted to a virtual person who will always agree with you, tell you how wonderful you are and how nice you look?
AI chatbots sometimes give incorrect, outdated or misleading answers, including on sensitive topics like health or mental illness. We must start regulating these things before the damage done to the human race cannot be undone.
David Brown is publisher of the Cherokee Scout. Call him at 828-837-5122 or email dbrown@cherokeescout.com.