Tinder is shutting down all the accounts of users who are younger than 18 years of age starting next week. The dating app has previously allowed anyone over 13, which is the youngest age that a person can sign up for Facebook, to sign up and use the app. Users between the ages of 13 and 17 were, however, only matched with someone of the same age group.
Tinder decides to discontinue service for users under 18 https://t.co/UJcv0Zh6nQ pic.twitter.com/ThDT4rGWNp
— CNN (@CNN) June 9, 2016
#Tinder is stopping teenagers from using the dating app https://t.co/kQKnSiyFMo
— ECP Ltd (@ECP_LTD) June 10, 2016
Tinder, which was launched in 2012, is the world’s most popular match-making and dating application. Its simple yet elegant user interface, bundled together with its social & geo-matching capabilities, has helped it reach the top in a very short span of time. The company currently has a valuation of over a billion dollars, and with more than 10 million daily users and a total of 50 million registered users, it is one of the most popular mobile applications in the world. A total of 1.4 billion “swipes” are made everyday, and it has so far made 10 billion matches. More than 70 percent of Tinder’s userbase consists of millennials, people born between the years of 1982 and 2004.
In an official statement, made by Tinder’s VP of Communications, Rosette Pambakian, the company announced the following.
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.
Previously, the app had two separate communities; one for users between the ages of 13 and 17, and another for those aged 18 and above. This was to prevent minors from interacting with adults. Pambakian considers its latest decision to be a positive step for the app. She further added that Tinder had been considering this new policy since earlier this year.
“We’ve been reviewing this policy since early this year and believe it’s the right thing to do.
“A number of factors go into making a decision like this, but we’re confident we landed on the right policy.”
This decision will apparently have little impact on Tinder considering only about three percent of its users are under 18. The app is available in 196 countries and has a user base of about 50 million people worldwide. So far, it only caters to the needs of straight people, but the company also announced last week of its plans to improve its accessibility to the LGBTQ community.
@Tinder ‘s CEO says the company is working to make the dating service better for transgender users. https://t.co/CzUawcUoA6 #codecon
— Recode (@Recode) June 2, 2016
Tinder is relatively late in implementing this policy in comparison to other dating services. It had previously defended its reluctance in removing users under 18 by claiming that the app could be used by children to make friends and connect with new people. But given Tinder’s reputation as a hookup app, its latest decision makes sense.
The company is, however, yet to provide details on how exactly it plans on verifying the ages of its users going forward. As the app requires Facebook credentials to set up a profile, minors faking their age in Facebook can still end up using Tinder. Minors could either setup a fake Facebook account or simply change their birthday in their existing accounts, which Facebook allows a few times.
[Photo by Tsering Topgyal/AP Images]
