Teens, Sex and Adult Dating Apps

We related in The Allure of Nymphets that Mary Odem shared in Delinquent Daughters that, by 1920, the age of consent was raised from ≈ 10-years-old to 16 and 18 in almost every US state. However, feminists were dismayed to learned that it wasn't dirty old men whom were to solely blame for the raunchy behavior of teen girls (i.e., It was a two-way street).

To give an example of how raunchy things got, Odem related that during World War I, when the problem of female sexual delinquency assumed national proportions with the spread of prostitution and consequently venereal diseases among soldiers, a five-mile radius moral zone was implemented around military training camps. 

In those moral zones, alcohol and prostitution were prohibited. Surprisingly, the military discovered that it was not professional prostitutes whom were loitering around military bases - it was teenage girls. Over the course of the war approximately 30,000 (very) young women were apprehended for illicit activity, (teen) prostitution, and suspicion of spreading venereal diseases.

Over 100 years later, Moises Mendez II wrote in the post "The Teens Slipping Through the Cracks on Dating Apps" for The Atlantic that it's easy for teens to create profiles on adult dating (e.g., Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and Grindr), and despite the apps efforts, it has been difficult to keep teens off the apps. 

Mendez wrote that he: "[...] spoke with three young people who[m] said they online-dated while under 18, easily lying about their age to create profiles."

For example, after 15-year-old Ellie violated Tinder and Bumble's terms of service, she got a lot of attention and, consequently, went on dates with "a number of college-age men":

Ellie, a 19-year-old based in California who requested to be referred to by her first name only to protect her privacy, was just 15 years old when she made her first profiles on Tinder and Bumble. She quickly found that “a lot of guys” were into how young she was. She said she met up with a number of college-age men [...] [Emphasis addded]

Mendez related that another teen, like Ellie, started on an adult app at 15, and like Ellie, received a lot of attention from older men but, despite the app's effort to flag and take down the teen's accounts, "several times", the teen kept making new accounts. 

Unsurprisingly, Mark White reported for SkyNews that some British teens are circumventing the age requirements on adult dating apps as well. For example, a 12-year-old Hertfordshire nymphet violated a dating app's terms of service before meeting a man for sex. 

Mendez ended his piece by writing that apps need "more in-depth screenings" (e.g., ID and/or credit card verifications) to protect "vulnerable minors" from violating the terms of service on adult dating apps. 

But just like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union who lobbied to have the age of consent raised, Mendez and White don't appear to be looking both ways. It's a two-way street. Of course, adults should not meet nymphets on dating apps for (illegal) sex, apps should attempt to do more to protect nymphets from voluntarily violating the apps terms of service, but more needs to be done to protect teens from themselves like other teens, for example, whom create illegal accounts on sex cam sites.

Mare of Mare of Easttown

Remember what Mare of Mare of Easttown said, "Trust me. Teenage girls are fucking sneaky.

THE ATLANTIC: The Side-Effect of Treating Adolescents Like Children | Santa Claus vs Pornhub

Kate Julian's cover story in the May 2020 issue of The Atlantic is titled "The Anxious Child: And the Crisis of Modern Parenting". It's a long piece; so, I'll give the TL;DR version, which is that, treating adolescents like children causes high levels of anxiety in teens. 

Here are two examples that Julian cites of how (some) parents treat adolescents like children:

"Cutting a 13-year-old’s food because she’s afraid of knives."

"Meanwhile, the efforts parents make to promote belief in, for example, Santa Claus seem more fervent than ever, via tools like Elf on the Shelf and apps that supposedly show Santa’s visit to your home [...] In another era, the desire to keep kids in the dark [about Santa Claus] might not be a problem, but it’s a strange combination with the easy access many of them now have to Pornhub and viral videos of real-life violence [via smartphones]."

Julian's piece reminds us of Winnifred Bonjean Alpart who shared in "In Porn Before Puberty?", an ABC News feature, that when she was in eighth grade, "[..] boys mostly, were watching porn during school [...] during independent reading, they would do that." In addition, the feature related that nine out of ten children between the ages of eight and sixteen have viewed pornography on their smartphones.

And The Atlantic cover story reminds us of Judith Levine's book Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex.