Parents also need to stay calm, so that the kids feel comfortable coming back to them if they ever end up in a bad situation, like if a scary stranger won’t stop messaging.Īs a society, we have failed to create enough spaces for gay youth to thrive, pushing them online and underground. They need to know the risk of infections from unprotected sex. They need to be told that it’s dangerous to meet up with a person from the internet and that if they do so, they need to tell their parents and meet the person in a public place. They should know that sex between a minor and an adult is illegal. Explain to children that while what they find online may be exciting or interesting, they never know who’s on the other side.Ĭhildren need to hear that naked photos and videos are permanent (even when sent on Snapchat). “Parents can instead be the experts on the importance of deeper in-person relationships,” she says. Englander tells parents not to try to be experts on the technology. But kids almost always outsmart us, and it’s probably better to educate them in addition to using parental controls.ĭr. I reported it to the site’s administrator via email, but I never heard back. Two minutes after I opened a gay chat room, a user wrote: “Any boys 13 or 14 with cameras? I’m 35.” After some deep searching, I found that you can report activity like this to moderators, but they aren’t always online.
When I searched online for “gay chat,” as a lonely, closeted child might, the first hit was #1 Chat Avenue. The lawsuit was dismissed because Grindr is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which means it isn’t responsible for what users say on its app (including minors lying about their age).Īnd Grindr is hardly the only problem - there are many similar venues.
In 2015, a man who had been arrested for having sex with a 13-year-old boy sued Grindr, claiming that its weak enforcement of age restrictions was to blame for the sexual encounter.
Age verification through social media is hardly foolproof, since minors can lie about their age on Facebook, too. When asked to comment, Grindr’s chief technology officer and president, Scott Chen, said that Grindr is “in the process of testing further safeguards for our account creation procedures to help ensure authentic and proper account activity, including verification through social media platforms.” He said the company takes the issue very seriously, is working on improving its screening tools and encourages users to continue reporting any “illegal or improper activity.” This would require employees to manually verify which conversations were inappropriate, but given that Grindr’s annual revenue may be as high as $77 million, the company could probably afford it. Grindr could also use algorithms to detect conversations between minors and adults. But this brings up confidentiality risks for gay men who don’t want to be outed. Some gambling sites, for instance, make users upload a credit card or ID to prove their age. But it could certainly do more to try to verify ages. Grindr’s terms of service state that users must be 18 or older, and the app requires everyone to enter a birth date to join.