Advice & Resources

Here are practical tips, expert advice and resources to help you equip teens with the tools they need to make safer choices about who they casually date or interact with romantically online.

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What should parents know about teens and online dating?

As online dating has become the new normal for adults, we ask our experts to shed a light on how this phenomenon is affecting teens and what parents can do to keep them safe.

Expert Q&A article to support young people

Related online issues

See advice on a range of online issues that your child may face when online dating to help them be vigilant and make smarter choices.

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Help from other organisations

Here is a list of organisations where you can learn more about how to protect your teen from the potential risks when it comes to dating someone online.

Barnado’s – protecting the UK’s most vulnerable children. NSPCC – keeping children safe Think U Know – an education programme Childline – A free, private and confidential service #AskTheAwkward from Thinkuknow Ditch the Label – Online message boards for those aged 12-25

Dating apps and sites parents should know

Most of these free dating or ‘meet up’ websites or apps allow users to quickly see images of potential local romantic or sexual partners and locate those where there is mutual interest.

It’s important to exercise discernment if the app/site they’re using is age-appropriate for your teen.

Tinder 18+

Tinder is a dating app that lets you browse pictures of potential matches within a certain mile radius of your location.

What parents need to know: Meeting up (and possibly “hooking up”) is pretty much the goal. Many apps have copied this swiping style, so if you see it in another app, it’s best to take a second look.

Bumble 18+

Bumble is a location-based social and dating application that facilitates communication between interested users. In heterosexual matches, only female users can make the first contact with matched male users, while in same-sex matches either person can send a message first.

What parents need to know: Content will be visible to other users of the App all around the world instantly.

Yubo 18+

Advertised as a social networking site where users can make new friends.

What parents need to know: While the app is only for users aged 18+, it formerly allowed users aged 13+ to create accounts. Yubo must verify their age by taking a selfie, which Yubo then uses age estimation technology on to determine if the user is at least 18 years old.

Skout 17+

The Skout app and site offer several ways to connect with other users, including “saying hi” via someone’s profile, watching live streams (or going live), chatting with people who have “liked” you back, or using the “Buzz” feature to access a feed of local users (that appears to be a Facebook feed) who are mostly posting selfies.

What parents need to know: In its Safety Tips section, Skout claims to separate teens from adults so they can’t interact, but that no longer seems to be the case. And, like most of the other dating apps here, it’s easy to enter a fake birth date.

OurTeenNetwork 13+

A free teen network site and teen chat, social network.

What parents need to know: This teen dating and social networking site offers too many opportunities for unmoderated interaction, including video chat and several (nearly empty) chat rooms. Profiles are visible to anyone who visits the site unless users change their settings to hide them. There are lots of links to chat and dating sites that are geared toward adults.

Lovoo 16+

An app to chat, meet and develop relationships with people nearby.

What parents need to know: Members can earn ‘diamonds’ from this feature (when they host live streams), which they can exchange for Lovoo credits or cash – which may be easy for sexual predators to use to entice children and young people.