Spring 2026 PhotoVoice
By: Loghan Fisher
OS, Inc. Youth Advocate Co-Chair
A brightly lit claw machine, shorter and clearly made for kids, sits right at the entrance of a local boba shop. It’s priced at “$0.50 but we take $1.” It seems like a small risk for a cute price, but it makes you wonder, when does something like this start to build the foundation for gambling?
At my daily job as a math tutor, I was excited to get to know a student better and help them feel ready to learn and he was. But that excitement wasn’t rooted in learning concepts of probability, but the thrill from testing that chance: his mom was going to take him to the store in hopes of pulling the next best “rare” and “cool-looking” card. Math slowly faded into the background as his new innocent hobby began to revolve around risk and reward, and consume him.