Swiped out: dating app Tinder is banning all young teenagers, starting next week

The dating app Tinder will ban all users under 18 starting next week. That’s a big change from its earlier policy, which allowed anyone over 13 to use the app - albeit only with other users who were also under 18.

Tinder Vice-President of Communications Rosette Pambakian told Techcrunch that the company started reconsidering its age policy earlier this year, and that the move is the “right thing to do.” Here’s their full statement:

“On a platform that has facilitated over 11 billion connections, we have the responsibility of constantly assessing our different user experiences. Consistent with this responsibility, we have decided to discontinue service for under 18 users. We believe this is the best policy moving forward. This change will take effect next week.”

Although the statement doesn’t explicitly address the safety concerns that allowing adults and children to use the same dating app might raise, it wouldn’t be too surprising if safety was a driving force behind the decision.

Last year, The Washington Post looked at how dating apps such as Tinder were treating under-18 users. While it is true that Tinder does say that underage users are separated from the adults on the site, we learned that it’s really not that hard for an adult to set up a fake profile as a teen - or vice-versa - on the site. Here’s more:

“Do hook-up apps have an obligation to protect underage users? Legally speaking, not really. COPPA, the federal statute that governs how Internet companies interact with kids, only applies to children younger than 14.