Santa Fe gambling awareness app gains traction within first 48 hours

StopApuestas, the parental control app launched by Argentina's Santa Fe province to restrict minors' access to illegal gambling platforms, surpassed 1,000 downloads within 48 hours of going live.

According to provincial authorities, this number reflects an early evidence of demand for the tool.

The app allows parents and guardians to manage which content, websites and applications minors can access on their devices, and was developed jointly by the province's Secretariat of Technologies for Management and the Santa Fe Lottery. The government's target is to reach the roughly 350,000 students enrolled in the provincial school system.

The adoption rate comes against a backdrop of growing underage gambling activity. Daniel Di Lena, VP of the Santa Fe Lottery, cited UNICEF data showing that one in four adolescents aged 12 to 17 placed at least one bet in the past year, with even higher rates recorded in certain areas of the province.

Despite the province having secured the judicial blocking of 385 illegal sites, the problem persists as operators quickly change domains to continue operating.

Ignacio Tabares, Secretary of Technologies for Management, said: "One in four kids bets. It's a global problem. And these sites change constantly to evade controls, which is why we needed a more robust tool."

The app operates through a whitelist system: the province pre-authorizes access to over 400 websites and 200 applications, with parents able to customize permissions on top of that baseline. Everything outside that list is blocked by default. When a minor attempts to access a restricted site, a real-time request is sent to the parent's device for approval or rejection.

The tool is available for both Android and iOS on phones and tablets and can be used outside Santa Fe's borders, a detail that positions it as a potential model for other Argentinian provinces, where coordinated national policy on underage online gambling is absent.