Remember when we used to be in like high school and the thought of talking to your crush literally frightened you to the point that you wanted to throw up? Well, yeah. Today’s teens do not have to worry about something like that at all because they have tinder.

While to some it may just be a mobile app for online dating, all you have to do is swipe right and voila! You meet your match made in heaven or maybe the spiny labyrinth we know as the internet.

What is Tinder?

Tinder is currently a mobile app that is an extension for an online dating platform created by HatchLabs in 2012. What sets tinder apart from all the dating platforms is:

1. Their Inaccessibility

Formerly a well known dating websites like cupid.com didn’t do as well as tender as they didn’t catch up with the current times and the needs of its users, unlike tinder. It does not only understand its audience really well, but it also revolutionized the face of online dating as we know it.

Furthermore, the app has also been really amazing at pairing people that live in more or less the same city, just miles from one another, while other websites did not give the assurance of the person you seem interested in being in the same Timezone. With ties to facebook.com, one does not have to go through a very detailed sign up process. All you have to do here is a sign in through your Facebook account and you’re good to go.

2. Creep Alert

Unlike other dating apps tinder filters people and keeps the ones you do not like away from you. This is how it works on tinder; if you like someone you swipe right and if you don’t you swipe left. Now, the person that you approve of also has to swipe right to give tinder mutual consent from both parties. Once that is done, tinder opens up a unique chat box for the two of you and you both can talk to your heart’s desire.

Here’s the Catch

While all the precautionary measures taken by tinder are great. The same goes for all of its accessibility options, yet at the same time what happens to be the most controversial thing about the site is the number of teens that are minor by age turning to this app to look for like-minded teens to, in very crude terms, hookup with.

While all of it would have still been fine, if not for the following psychological implications;

1. Fear of Commitment

Our young ones already happen to be a part of a generation that would rather “hook up” with many people rather than be in a monogamous relationship for the rest of their life. While to some such an approach to life doesn’t seem like much of life, but more youngsters seem to cherish this idea of living life like a big party. While such an attitude serves well when one is say 17 years old, 21 years old or even 26 years old, but once they go past the mark of 30 years of age, such activities seem of highly inappropriate. But, the problem is, by then. These individuals are too set in their ways to forge a committed and loving relationship with someone they’d like to be with, without getting bored, which is something to think about.

2. Unrealistic Expectations

One can simply marvel the various wonders of photoshop. It can truly turn a beast into a beauty and vice versa in the blink of an eye. Since they are so used to seeing beautiful people looking flawless up on websites like tinder, that they don’t think how people tend to be imperfectly perfect in real life and tend to miss out on all the good things about relationships and life in an effort to quench their thirst for unrealistic expectations.

3. Communication Barrier

Another qualm faced by people who frequent the apparent hallowed halls of tinder is a communication barrier. When you chat with someone through a messenger, you have the option to think what you’re going to say before actually saying it without seeming awkward at all, while doing so in real life would make you someone socially awkward and not be able to carry a face to face conversation.

4. Predators

This is the same old “Is the blind date I have been set up with is a serial killer” scenario that people are usually worried about, as they should be. More so than ever, sex offenders and pedophiles are using apps like tinder to get in touch with young girls and body under sockpuppet accounts to cull their fetishes which makes such websites and apps all the more inappropriate for young teens.

Guest Author: Elizbeth is a writer and blogger, her area of interest is parenting and issues related kids. Currently, she involved in a parental monitoring application to monitor your kids’ text messages. Follow her on twitter @elizbethsewell6