Am I addicted to gambling? A two minute check

No app can make gambling impossible on an iPhone. The phone belongs to the person holding it, the Screen Time permission a blocker runs on is theirs to withdraw, and a product that tells you otherwise is claiming a power iOS does not give it. What a circle changes is that the decision cannot be undone quietly, because ending a term early takes a request, a wait measured in days rather than seconds, and a second person who is told when protection goes off, when the phone stops confirming, and when the subscription lapses.

Ten questions, and what to do with the answer

Tick a question if the answer is yes. Leave it if the answer is no, or if you are not sure, because a maybe you have to argue yourself into is closer to a no. Each tick is worth one and the questions are about the last twelve months. There is no right number of ticks and there is no pass.

These ten questions are ours. They are not a published screen, they have never been tested against one, and the reading under them is ours rather than a clinical threshold. The screens that have been tested are further down this page, along with the reason none of them is printed here.

Count your ticks and read what follows. It says the same thing whatever your number, which is that a number on a page is not a finding about you.

The published screens, and why none of them is printed here

Questionnaires that have been built, tested and published exist, and they are better than ten questions written for a web page. Two are the ones an article or an engine usually reaches for.

The Problem Gambling Severity Index is nine scored items from the Canadian Problem Gambling Index, developed by Ferris and Wynne and published in 2001 for the body now called the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction. Over the last twelve months it asks about betting more than you could afford, needing to stake more for the same feeling, going back to win losses back, borrowing or selling to fund it, feeling you might have a problem, being criticised for it, feeling guilty, harm to your health, and money trouble in the household. That is a description of what it asks and deliberately not the instrument: the rights holder's own terms permit personal, non commercial viewing and withhold the right to reproduce, publicly display or distribute without written permission, which we read on 3 September 2026 and do not have.

The Lie/Bet questionnaire is two items published by Johnson and colleagues in 1997. One asks whether you have had to lie to people who matter to you about how much you gambled; the other whether you have felt the need to bet more and more money. Both were picked from the diagnostic criteria of the day as the two best predictors, and a yes to either is a reason to take a longer screen rather than a finding in itself. Its journal publisher's own permissions statement says reusing a substantial portion of its content requires permission, and two items out of two is the whole of the work.

So this page describes and links rather than copies, which is what the National Council on Problem Gambling does on its own screening page. To take a published screen, go to the people who publish them. The Council hosts a self assessment of ten yes or no questions on its own site and says plainly which parts of it have been validated and which have not. The twenty questions used by Gamblers Anonymous are theirs to publish, and their own page says most compulsive gamblers answer yes to at least seven of them; we link them and never reprint them.

What no count on this page can tell you

It cannot tell you that you have a gambling disorder, because that is a diagnosis, made by a clinician who takes a history rather than by arithmetic. It cannot tell you that you do not have one either, and that is the more dangerous direction: a low count on a page you found at two in the morning is a poor argument against what the last year actually looked like.

What it can do is give you a sentence to open with. Most people who ring a helpline have been putting it off for months and are not sure what to say. I answered four out of ten on one of those things and I did not like it is a beginning, and the people answering have heard every version of it. The signs page sets out the nine clinicians actually work from, and where the line falls.

If the phone is where it happens

This is the part we build, and it is deliberately last rather than first. Fold'em is installed by the person who wants to be blocked, on their own phone, and seals betting apps and betting addresses on that one handset for a length of time set in advance. The record of the term lives on the server rather than in the app, so the phone's own clock is not an input and changing the date in iOS Settings changes nothing.

It is not treatment and it does not make gambling impossible. It makes the two in the morning version of the decision expensive, which is a smaller claim and a true one. If your count was high, the free services above are the first call; a sealed phone is what holds the next hour while you wait for an appointment. The app also carries a screen you can open from anywhere that asks nothing of you: calming tools, the people in your circle whose numbers are on the phone, and the helpline for your country, read from a bundled directory of 24 countries and an international fallback against the phone's own region setting.

Is there a proper gambling test I can take?

Yes, and the people who built them publish them, which is why this page links rather than copies. The National Council on Problem Gambling hosts one on its own site, ten yes or no questions, and it says on the same page that the NODS-SA has not yet been fully validated while the longer instrument it was cut from has been tested and shown to be reliable and valid in the general population. The twenty questions used by Gamblers Anonymous are theirs, and their page says most compulsive gamblers answer yes to at least seven of them. Source: the Council's own self assessment, read 3 September 2026.

What is the PGSI, and why can I not take it here?

It is the Problem Gambling Severity Index, nine scored items from the Canadian Problem Gambling Index, developed by Ferris and Wynne and published in 2001 for the body now called the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction. What it asks about is described further up this page; the items themselves are not reproduced, because the rights holder's own terms permit personal and non commercial viewing and withhold the right to reproduce, publicly display or distribute without written permission. The primary report is public and the section listing the nine retained items is inside it, so nothing here is hidden from you, only unlicensed for us to reprint. Sources: the rights holder's terms of use and the 2001 final report, both read 3 September 2026.

What are the warning signs of a gambling problem?

The National Council on Problem Gambling describes problem gambling as gambling behavior that is damaging to a person or their family, and names among its warning signs thinking about gambling all the time, needing to bet more money and more often, going back to win losses back, feeling restless when trying to cut down, and carrying on despite what it costs. That is their list rather than ours. The nine a clinician works from are a different thing again, with a threshold inside a diagnosis somebody else makes, and the signs page sets them out in this page's own short words and says where that line falls. Source: the Council on what problem gambling is, read 3 September 2026.

I answered yes to several of these. What now?

Talk to somebody before you change anything on a phone. The National Problem Gambling Helpline, in the block at the foot of this page, states on its own site that it offers call, text and chat around the clock, that contacting it is confidential, and that no payment or insurance information is required, with only a carrier's own data rates applying to a text. If saying it out loud is the barrier, the text and the chat routes reach the same service. Sealing a phone is worth doing and worth doing second: it holds the next hour, and it does not answer the question you came here with. Source: the Council on its helpline, read 3 September 2026.

Where to go from here

If you want the nine signs and where the diagnostic line falls: signs of a gambling problem. If it is football, basketball or a live market on a phone: is sports betting addictive. If you have stopped before and it came back: when quitting did not stick, and what actually stops you. If you are here about somebody else: the page for the person beside them.