You know how it is – sometimes you’ll be browsing through Tinder or Grindr or the alternative, checking out the local talent when something completely weirds you out and makes you stop dead in your tracks. It might be a man frolicking in the surf on the back of a horse, or perhaps it’s a guy who thinks it’s appropriate to use their wedding photo as their profile picture, or maybe you’ve just stumbled across one of the thousands of cock shots which seem to populate the apps.
You’re shocked at first but you know how to deal with this stuff – you screen grab it, send it to 30 or so of your closest friends and post on
(http://dailyemerald.com/2013/10/15/wanna-hook-up-theres-an-app-for-that/) That’s something a little less funny and little more creepy. What if we've all been chatting to underage people on Tinder without even realising it?
It’s a legitimate concern if today’s warning from the National Crime Agency is anything to go by, because they’ve said we should all be checking people’s age whenever we use a dating app like Tinder because we need to be sure the people we’re speaking to are above the age of consent. Their warning follows a reported rise in the number of teenagers phoning the NSPCC’s helpline wanting to speak about bad experiences they’ve had since downloading apps like Tinder, Grindr or Blendr. Apparently there’s been a massive surge in under 16s who have come across problems whilst using the dating apps.
In theory users must confirm that they’re ‘age appropriate’ or over 17 before using these dating apps. Weird, then, that Tinder founder Justin Mateen told*Time** ***that, despite the fact users aged between 18 and 24 still dominate Tinder at just over 50%, there’s is still a surprising 7% base of users aged between 13 and 17. Apparently they’re only visible to one another, but it’s still a bit odd, isn’t it?
As long as people withhold their age either on their Facebook account or when they sign into a new app, we’re never really going to be 100% certain how old the people we’re chatting to actually are. You might be able to make a pretty fair assessment by looking at their photographs, but is ‘pretty fair’ really good enough when it comes to chatting to someone on a dating app? Food for thought…
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophiecullinane
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.