Good Job Promoting Online Dating To Minors, Seventeen Magazine

It may be called Seventeen, but the popular teen magazine targets girls ages 12-19. Which is why it is pretty icky that they are running stories talking about how great the world of online dating is. Way to set our children up to be stalked by creeps on the Internet.

”Let’s face it: we’re all techoholics! Even though we do basically everything online, I always thought of online dating as something older people do,” wrote college-aged blogger, Isabelle Furth. ”I was talking to a new friend and she was telling me all about her boyfriend. I admit it, I was a little jealous. He sounded so great and she was so happy in her relationship. When I asked her how they met, she told me she had signed up for Match.com and had met him online right away. Now six months later, they’re engaged!”

The daunting task of explaining to a kid that they can never really know who they are communicating with online is hard enough without magazines like Seventeen promoting online dating. Online dating is not for minors – period. Match.com claims to be for adults 18 or over – not that you can ever monitor that stuff on the Internet. Why is a magazine that targets pre-teens singing the praises of an online dating site that the majority of their audience is way too young to use?

I have a 13-year-old step-daughter, and her use of the Internet and social media scares the heck out of me. Recently, we had to have a long talk about Instagram and how she should and shouldn’t be using it. Kids like to “collect” followers on these sites – the more the better. They also like to take selfies all day long. If your kids aren’t setting their profiles to “private,” there are random people potentially looking at photo after photo of your child all day long. There is also a “photo map” option which maps where the photo was taken. Basically, Instagram is a tool that predators can use to salivate over your kids and then pinpoint their exact location. But I’m not paranoid or anything.

I use the Instagram example to say, I don’t want my kids to approach interacting with strangers on the Internet lightly. It is very,very dangerous. The minds behind Seventeen magazine should be a little more responsible with their content and what they are advising their young readers to do.

(photo: Twitter)