Starting next week, people under the age of 18 will notice something really different about their Tinder account. Spoiler: their account will simply no longer exist. According to a statement provided to Complex, the very popular dating app will ban users who are under 18 as soon as next week.
Until now, Tinder's minimum age limit was 13 (yes, people who can't even take driver's education classes yet are on Tinder), but now the minor hammer is coming down to give these younger folks the boot from the app. In a statement provided to Complex over email, Rosette Pambakian, Tinder's Vice President of Communications and Branding said,
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.
As of April 2016, Tinder had an estimated 50 million users, with 10 million of these using the app daily, amounting to 1.4 billion swipes a day. But now, the under 18 among us who want to find a date for Friday night (or the homecoming dance?) will have to find an alternative to the addictive swiping of Tinder. Tech Crunch reports that less than 3 percent of Tinder users will be affected by this change.
This change reflects policies already in place by one of Tinder's competitor dating apps, Bumble, which does not allow users under the age of 18 to create an account on their app.
