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Sports Gambling and Screen Time: Are You Losing More Than You Think? · Voices for Voices®

• 0:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Hi everyone, it's Justin here at Voices for Voices.
• 0:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you so much for joining us.
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  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh, it's because of you where we are on uh the the point where we are just about to episode number 600.
• 0:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That's uh just incredible.
• 0:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh so we're gonna talk about sports today and a couple of uh areas we need to look out for.
• 0:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And I'm speaking from experience, uh, especially on the one uh, but we're we're gonna start uh with so we may or may not like sports, we may or may not like certain sports.
• 1:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um this first part, it is regarding could be sports, could be anything, uh, where we're able to, in most places, uh, we're able to gamble or wager.
• 1:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Like if I want team A to win, I give ten dollars, and maybe if they win, then I would get an extra twenty dollars.
• 1:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So that would be thirty dollars, and if I lose, I just lose that ten dollars.
• 2:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So gambling is a huge lucrative business for casinos, uh, for sports books, uh, and I I think we have normalized it here in the United States.
• 2:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh the gambling uh it has uh it spread so much so that uh you rarely, rarely can uh watch or be at a sporting event that doesn't highlight and talk about uh sports betting, sports gambling.
• 2:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You always hear at the end or see disclaimer, you know, if you have a problem for gambling too much, losing a lot of money, people sometimes have a hard time stopping.
• 3:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And so with the advent of sports and the advent of sports gambling and betting, it gives it gives people a reason to maybe watch a game, to be interested in a game that might not be their home team, might not be you know their local team, uh they may be betting on uh whether American football, college, American football, uh the World Series, baseball here in the United States speaking.
• 3:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And and so we have to we have to just watch out for that because uh I haven't I haven't gambled in quite a long time, and even when I did, it was a very uh very limited, so it would have been like the Super Bowl, uh, American football, like you know, I would would bet, I forget how much, but it wasn't a lot, it was a way to say, Oh, I'm involved in this game.
• 4:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm not playing the game, but I'm involved, so now I have a reason to root or cheer for a certain team, a certain player, uh, how many points each quarter, each period, uh all those, all those things.
• 4:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And I think we just have to keep keep an eye out for that.
• 5:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh, some some people are more susceptible to that than others.
• 5:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh we just we just gotta make sure that I give this analogy a lot.
• 5:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We have to be sure that whatever money that we are gambling, betting, whatever, whatever word you want to use, uh, whatever money that is, they you could be driving down the highway, having your window rolled down, and having the money just fall out throughout the window.
• 5:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And it may seem a little silly until it doesn't, because there's a chance it can win, and there's a chance it can lose.
• 6:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And so when we start putting money, I mean there's there's all kind of movies uh out there with a gambling theme.
• 6:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um, but the closer we get to the point where I'm gonna go bankrupt or something because we're we're just gambling too much, we're losing, and we're just like, well, the next time, the next time we'll make it up.
• 6:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'll be able to make it up.
• 6:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's like going to a casino.
• 6:34
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I've nothing against casinos.
• 6:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I've not I don't have anything against organizations that do betting and and the like.
• 6:47
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um with everything you do in moderation if you do it.
• 6:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh I don't do it because I the moderation thing really doesn't work for me uh when it when it comes to things like alcohol and thing in and that.
• 7:13
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So that was again 2017 coming up on 10 years, sobriety, drug-free, etc.
• 7:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And it's mostly the alcohol free.
• 7:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um very rarely did or experimented with with drugs, uh, but I just put that in there because that is a part of sobriety.
• 7:41
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And I talk about gambling and betting, and that that can get out of hand really quick.
• 7:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Again, like I said, oh, I lost this amount, so I'll make it up on the next one, and then the next one, and then the next one.
• 8:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And luckily, I never never fell into that uh pothole, I guess you call it, uh, where it meant so much and in the money that I bet or gamble meant so much that it was gonna affect other areas of my life because of that.
• 8:29
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So that's the first area.
• 8:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um the second area, it ties in, and we've talked a lot, we talk a lot about social media.
• 8:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh, we've talked about Doom Scrolling, you know, or we're bored.
• 8:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh, and and so we pull open uh on our phone or desktop social media platform and and then just scroll and scroll and then read and read and scroll and read and scroll and read and and all those things.
• 9:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And so I'll put on top of that doom scrolling, having it be about sports.
• 9:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So sports doom scrolling for some reason, just like the news, it seems like the more people click on an article or a post if it's negative than if it's positive.
• 9:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: All you have to do is go to any news site uh watch your local or national or nationwide, worldwide news.
• 10:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And a lot of times it's some of the most polarizing, some of the most polarizing content or stories out there.
• 10:13
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's what's that do?
• 10:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It increases our stress level, increases our heart rate.
• 10:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
• 10:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And next thing you know, we're on our phones, and we're doom scrolling, ruminating.
• 10:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So so and so got injured if we're done out sports, uh, or our our team has lost two games in a row or three games in a row, and so a lot of times people, and I'm talking about myself from several years back, would you know, like I mentioned, if the if the team that we're rooting for you know loses two games, or a coach or a manager makes a bad decision, then we're like, oh, we gotta go check out this.
• 11:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And it's not always just the article that the doom scrolling is.
• 11:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So the article could talk about team ABC has lost two games in a row for the first time in 10 years, or whatever it is.
• 11:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm making this up, but what I'm not making up is when you scroll to the bottom of the article, most articles, there's something called the comment section.
• 11:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And a lot of people will go to the comment section.
• 11:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They may or may not read, they may skim through an article, but they'll be like, Oh, I wonder what people were saying about this, this player, um, uh about uh this coach, uh, this manager, uh, this owner, this general manager.
• 12:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And and that doom scrolling is even more toxic because we're again looking for, even though we might not think we are, we're like, oh, I wanna I wonder what the the fan base is saying about this, or I wonder what the author of the article is saying, like and and so we're doomed scrolling comments, and the reason why I'm bringing this up is because first off, the team I root for, Cleveland Indians, they're now referred to as the Cleveland Guardians.
• 13:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They've lost a couple games, they lose, you know, this depending on where things stand when this episode drops, uh they may still be in the playoffs or they may not.
• 13:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And so the team I'm rooting for, Cleveland Indians, now it's the Guardians, they lost the last two games.
• 13:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And I found myself going to articles about the team, about the game, thinking, well, I wonder what people are saying about the coach, the manager, or this player or that player.
• 13:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And I'm going and I'm just scrolling down, doing that doom scrolling on the comments, find one, and it's negative, but it seems kind of not that it's hilarious, it's not that it's super funny, it's just uh we're like, oh, this person had this comment, all that, and then this person commented on another comment.
• 14:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And and so all I'm bringing this up is because these are big time wasters, especially the Doom scrolling, regular Doom scrolling, bad enough as it is, try to limit that amount of time, but when we're doom scrolling about sports, there's something about sports for some of us that makes the doom scrolling like even heavier and deeper, meaning we do it more and more.
• 14:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We keep scrolling, like there could be a thousand comments, not saying that every single time we would we would scroll through all a thousand comments, we would read all thousand, all the replies and and reshares, but we we look for like the most recent one, right?
• 15:17
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Like, oh, this was posted 25 minutes ago, this one's posted five minutes ago, and all this to say is we're taking first, we're taking the time out of our day to do something that is not the most healthy thing to do, which is Doom scrolling.
• 15:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We're taking it a level deeper in that we're doing sports because we have teams or uh players or uh whatever, whatever sport we're we're what we're watching, listening to, and and so we feel a little bit invested because well, I like this team, and yeah, I'm upset they lost two games in a row.
• 16:13
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Who isn't?
• 16:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Who wouldn't be, right?
• 16:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Especially they're talking about the playoffs, getting ready, you know, the team that wins four first uh is going to the world series, have a chance to play against the Milwaukee Brewers uh for World Series Championship.
• 16:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And so I have found for me the doom scrolling for sports to be again that level deeper, meaning it takes longer and longer for me to stop.
• 16:54
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And so, right, so we we're talking about the gambling, so that's one area.
• 17:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Talk about doom scrolling, that's another area.
• 17:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We're talking about the sports doom scrolling, that's another area, and then we talk about sleep as the fourth area.
• 17:17
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Now, why am I talking about sleep and what's sleep have to do with you know, our favorite team or our favorite players or players that you know we we would be happy if they were traded?
• 17:35
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: How does this affect sleep?
• 17:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Okay, um, it's just kind of it's all relevant, it's all it's all tied together.
• 17:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So give me an example.
• 17:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: People go to sleep at all different hours of night.
• 17:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Some get more sleep, some get less sleep, and it doesn't matter what's going on, whether it's a there's a game, whether there's um an event, a concert, you name it, but whatever, whatever, whatever it is.
• 18:13
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And so let's take let's take a a game, a sport game match that starts at 5 p.m.
• 18:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Okay.
• 18:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So we watch the game or listen to the game, and we're doing our doom scrolling, and we do all that.
• 18:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Maybe we're betting, maybe we're not.
• 18:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And the game at 5 ends at let's say 8 o'clock.
• 18:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 7.30, 8 p.m.
• 18:55
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And we're doom scrolling for another, let's say, hour.
• 19:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So that would take us to 8.30.
• 19:07
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So that's still a fair amount to be able to do our nightly, I'll say our nightly chores, you know, brushing our teeth, washing our face, all that.
• 19:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You're grabbing a shower.
• 19:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And then we take ball games that they don't start at 5 p.m.
• 19:35
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They start at 8 p.m.
• 19:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: or 8.15 p.m.
• 19:41
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Okay.
• 19:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That ball game goes to around 11-ish.
• 19:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And we go to the phone or doom scrolling for an hour.
• 19:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You know, we're not telling ourselves we're doom scrolling, or we're just doing it.
• 20:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We're just like picking up the phone.
• 20:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Let me see.
• 20:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Let me see what this article's about.
• 20:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Let me see.
• 20:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Oh, okay.
• 20:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And then I, you know, keep keep scrolling and scrolling.
• 20:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um then I do, you know, the the nightly chores, brushing teeth, and all that.
• 20:27
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So that could take us to close to midnight.
• 20:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Well, being done with chores or and you know, the brushing the teeth, washing face and all that at 8 30 versus 11 or 12, that's an almost four-hour difference.
• 20:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Oh, an almost three-hour difference, my bad.
• 20:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And when we would be ready to rest at night.
• 21:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And as somebody who likes their sleep a lot, later nights don't really help me as much as like an earlier night.
• 21:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Even whether I'm doom scrolling or not.
• 21:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um having having a game or a match that is done earlier, it it allows me to get ready for bed much sooner than a game that starts at eight, eight fifteen.
• 21:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And then, right?
• 21:54
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So it's not just the time of the game, it's commercials too.
• 21:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So if it was just the game playing uh watching listening it it wouldn't take three hours or so uh it would be a lot less and then you add in the postgame show so if we so if a team wins we watched a postgame show and see if one of our favorite players is gonna be interviewed on on the postgame show and so we have all these different layers all these things that we just kind of accept what they are where they are we don't have control of when when the game times are uh but we have control over more control over the doom scrolling right when we're able just to put the phone down and be done with it so we can have and get our uh get our sleep that we need again like me like I I really like sleep so uh the more sleep I can get I feel better for the most part although I'm able to tell I'm not sure at exactly what point my back starts to like get sore I'm still trying to look at when I go to the gym and work on my back if that has any correlation to back soreness in the morning but that's that's that's the side there uh and so yeah we we talk about you know the gambling part and yeah you can do that responsibly safely um so that's all we just say is if if you're gonna do something like that um it uh again I you know think of my analogy that whatever money you have set aside if you have money set aside I I would hope that you do again that you're not digging into you know savings and and different things like that uh that if you were driving down or somebody else was driving you down the down the highway that you were had the window roll down and you're just putting money out the window uh and then you would be okay financially then again I'm I'm not an expert on this I'm just a human being that knows what it's like a little bit about that uh and so we would hope that you wouldn't you'd be taking yourself and your family to the brink of bankruptcy because of that um and then with sports right it we're even more into the games or matches uh when we're when we've bet or you know uh bet money on a game or match and then we take our take our doom scrolling and we stack on top of that the sports so it's sports doom scrolling and it's a psychological thing I I think uh and so we scroll when we scroll and we look and we look and then do we look at the article or are we looking at oh I saw the title of this article I I'm scrolling all the way to the bottom to to the comments and I've done that before where I'm like oh I gotta see what people are saying like what and it I'll say it's sad but true but it it is that oh I gotta see what I gotta see what people are saying.
• 26:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It has nothing to do it's not gonna impact my life what they say but again it's taking brain power it's it's uh it it's it's taking yeah it's just taking brain power uh and we're just spending more time on our devices uh when we we we would like to try to maybe spend a little less or if we are on our device that's it a little healthier time where we're not the most excited at like oh I can't wait to see the comments on this that we would hopefully be doing again more healthy things where we're our because that just what that does that just keeps our our minds moving at a very stressful and I want to say anxiety anxiety or anxiety it's an anxiety because once we're done with all that we still have to do a regular nightly routine of brushing teeth and that um and so then that eats into our our our sleeping time our resting time and I will say that for me um my sleep the time I'm getting to to bed because of the different times in the ball games especially the later games it's heart at like 8 7 30 8 I'm not getting that great a rest I'm I'm not getting to bed till like midnight or 1 a.m and so I'm gonna be happy when things get back to normal where uh games aren't starting so late or if you know heaven forbid my team loses and doesn't make it to the World Series that's okay.
• 28:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh one of the two things or a combination will help me get get to bed at a more regular decent hour um that's why I know it's a it's a it it's affecting me and impacting me in those ways so I can only just wonder if it may be impacting more than just me.
• 29:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh and I'm not here to tell you not to watch your game not to listen to game I'm not here to do any of that we're here just to talk common sense and just uh call it what it is I mean I I you know the things that are happening to me I I I think there might be other people that's why I'm doing this episode on on these topics uh and then yeah the the sleep you know we're you know we're we we we finish the game we do some doom scrolling then we do the postgame show or post match show see what you know the people to get paid lots of money to sit on TV or the radio and talk about what just happened the game or the match uh that just happened and then it takes our brain a little bit of time to unwind once everything's kind of turned off and so that's the other area is there's a like a delay switch on our brain when we when we're done with screens so we have to think about that as well that it's not like oh the game's done at 11 I'm doom scrolling to 1130 and then I can get to bed right at 1135 or so no it's gonna take my brain anybody's brain most people's brains a little bit of time to unwind uh before we actually can get to bed to get to rest to get to the point to brush our teeth and all that um and I know back when the Cleveland Indians when when they were uh in the World Series playing in the Chicago Cubs years ago that doom scrolling was really bad because I say like I created a you know I was I was one of the commenters and so it wasn't just the doom scrolling and I I didn't have like a screen name but with that happen that you know that year I was I was one of the ones that was putting comments in and so then there was this even deeper layer and level because I wanted to see what other people were saying about my comments uh so you can see how this can just really just spin out of control uh you know one thing by itself maybe not as bad but when you start stacking and stacking and stacking and stacking things can can really uh get out of hand a little bit without us really knowing and so I wasn't just dealing with all those things that we've mentioned today except the gambling because they said the gambling hasn't not that big of a a deal for for me uh thank goodness um but I was I was one of the ones doing the commenting so I would comment on a comment then they would come another would comment and then people would like it it was just this whole thing and it just really uh did not help my mental health which is what all these things really have in common common is these all are impacting one way or another right if let's just say if we uh we're at the casino and we bet money on I don't know anything and we win you know we get that rush of like oh well I won maybe I can win again and let me put some more money down or let me put you know I'm playing with the house money now and we just have to be cognizant of that really and I I I can't and I'm not and I I can't change anybody else's behavior um I can't even change mine I mean to an extent I like as far as you know if the team I'm cheering for wins or lose like I don't know like I I would hope that the games aren't fixed um I I don't know is there a chance they could be maybe maybe not uh but the other stuff the doom scrolling you know creating the screen aim and then putting comments in and uh again we're reading things we're never gonna meet these people but 99.9999999% never gonna meet these people so we're just sort of looking at a screen and and and seeing what kind of reactions other people have said and see if it's something that resonates with us or whether it is something that doesn't resonate with us or we just keep scrolling and we scroll and then we got this whole thing about the sleep that isn't even getting thought about and so we're trying to wind down so we can get some rest and again we we we have that delay um for our brain to get from the state of mind we're in to get the brain calmed down enough to rest.
• 34:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We had a pretty jam-packed show today thanks for joining us you can give us a thumbs up like follow subscribe share reshare repost word of mouth uh if you have your phone out great if you don't pull that phone out I know it it can't be too far from where you're at and please share the Voices for Voices podcast with maybe 25 50 or 100 of your your contacts uh we're spending we're sending our love and and our support to each and every one of you and we hope to see you on a a future episode of the show again almost 600 episodes check out the back catalog uh we got a lot of great shows a lot of great shows i think they're all great uh but you know shows that will interest you more there's there's a lot as well as your your connections and your contacts so until next time let's celebrate all the voices in the world and let's be a voice for not only ourselves but maybe somebody else in need we'll see you next time and we'll talk to you and see you then bye bye for now