The notion of gambling fascinates the scientific community for almost thirty years to become today a major concern for health policy. It is a well-known fact that lack of control and excessive gambling can have deleterious effects on the individual.

The aim of this study was to compare the use of video games and gambling in a population of 5568 adolescents and young adults in schools, colleges and universities of France.

A majority of the sample was female (61.2% vs 38.8% male). We note that 43.4% of the sample is less than 18 years old. We evaluated personality dimensions (anxiety, depression, self-esteem, impulsivity), socio-cognitive variables (cognitive distorsions, life satisfaction) and habits (substance use).

Our results showed that 6% of children and 3,5% of adults were found to be at risk of gambling according to the Canadian Pathological Gambling Index (CPGI). Correlations between scores on gambling and problematic video game use were 0.29 for children and 0.44 for adults (significant at p 0.05). According to regression analysis, the predictors of problematic use of video games were depression, incapacity to stop (facet of impulsivity) and the score on the CPGI. For pathological gambling, the predictors were: interpretive bias (dimension of cognitive distorsion), substance use (tobacco and cannabis), facets of impulsivity of the UPPS (incapacity to stop, positive urgency and lack of premeditation) and the total score for the problematic use of video game.

These results are interesting in the adaptation of care for people with gambling problem.