The kids are not all right. That’s the belief held by the British government, which wants to end the televised marketing of gambling products. This new nanny state campaign occupied much of the front page of Friday’s edition of The Times newspaper, whose banner headline declared, “Gambling adverts face ban from daytime TV.”

British children must be shielded from the alleged risks associated with developing the gambling habit, according to gambling minister Tracey Crouch. She says, “The government is committed to ensuring that people, particularly the young…are protected from the risk of gambling-related harm.” Such conventional wisdom is actually unwise.

Our society is already suffering from the consequences of a generation of risk-averse, extravagantly “bubble-wrapped” childhoods. Ensuring that current and future generations of kids do not see gambling commercials on TV only guarantees that their ability to appreciate, navigate, and conquer an inherently risk-filled world will be further diminished, perhaps dangerously so.

The pioneering sociologist W.I. Thomas taught his early 20th century students that a taste for risk is essential to human development. He believed that the gambling instinct “is born in all normal persons. It is one expression of a powerful reflex, fixed far back in animal experience. The instinct is, in itself, right and indispensable.”