The internet has done wonders to facilitate communication between people. It has led to count-less communities forged between people who live hundreds if not thousands of miles away. It has also been used by people to meet other people around them for the purposes of finding friends as well as dating and relationships. It’s needless to say, online dating has become part of our culture. It is even more common in certain subsections of the population, namely amongst gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals, who use dating apps at nearly twice the rate or straight people. While it is good that technology is bringing people together, there is a dangerous side to that.

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When it comes to dating apps used by the LGBT community, the most famous (or infamous de-pending on who you ask) on is Grindr, which is a dating app designed for gay and bisexual men. Grindr is well known as a casual hookup app, used by gay and bisexual men in order to solicit sex and while the app, like most other dating apps, requires its users to be 18 in order to register, there exist a fair number of users who are underage.

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While I do not believe underage users should be allowed on Grindr under any circumstances (a belief shared by the app team as it allows for users to report suspected underage accounts), I understand why gay teens might be encouraged to use the app. Dating is extremely difficult for LGBT teens as the majority of the population is heterosexual, meaning it’s hard to find someone with whom one is compat-ible with who are also LGBT. Furthermore, our nation’s drinking laws make it so that most gay bars are off limits as many card at the door, restricting access to those who are below the federally mandated mini-mum drinking age of 21. This makes the logical place for these teens to be online and an app like Grindr, which is designed and implemented for the expressed purpose of meeting other gay and bisexual guys appealing.

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This creates a twofold problem, however. The first issue is that enables older men to potentially take advantage of young boys. This stems from the fact that most minors don’t have the maturity for proper risk assessment and can’t fully grasp the potential dangers of meeting up with random strangers on the internet, especially ones who might be significantly older than they are. The second issue has to do with the of age users, who can be charged with statutory sexual assault for hooking up with a person they believed was of legal age, but in reality, was not. It is worth noting that in some states, one can claim they thought someone was of legal age (in this case, the user’s account said they were 18), but not all states allow this defense and of those that do, some have very strict criteria for what is considered a valid scenario.

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Grindr and other dating apps like Tinder need to do more to help prevent underage users from accessing their services. The current system is clearly too lenient and it’s too easy to lie. These apps should require all users to do something in order to verify the accuracy of the reported age. Yes, that is a very difficult task, one potentially riddled with privacy concerns and security risks, but we need to start some-where.