What's more, betting with friends is vastly less harmful than betting at casinos (digital or otherwise.) When you bet with friends, your loss is their gain and their loss is your gain, the money more or less sticks around, the community as a whole isn't impoverished by it. But when people are gambling away their days wages playing rigged slot machines on their phone, that money might as well have been set on fire. It goes into the pockets of investors who might as well be on the other side of the planet and in the long run it will never be won back. The community as a whole is impoverished by this kind of gambling.