In the modern age, dating has never been easier. Countless apps exist to help people easily connect with one another and set up dates without ever meeting in person. While the convenience of this is unmatched, it could lead to many rough encounters.
“Catfishing” (the deceptive activity of creating a false online identity—often using stolen photos, names, and personal details—to trick others into a relationship, friendship, or business arrangement for various nefarious purposes) can be done easily and women are often on the receiving end of this. The “Tea app” has been developed to stop this problem officially, referring to themselves as, “the first ever safety dating platform for women.” Now this may sound all fine and dandy, but for the youth today it is used as a platform to perpetuate rumors and publicly shame.
The official goal of “Tea” is to help protect women from dangers of online dating through the use of reverse image searching to discover catfishes or background checks. This would help them see if a would-be-partner holds a nefarious past. The main function of the app is for women to be able to enter in their area code and search up the name of a possible match to see if they have been posted by anyone as a “bad partner.”
Additionally, the app, TeaonHer was developed by Newville Media Corporation to rival Tea and serve as a male-only counterpart. The goal is the inverse of Tea’s, seeking to “help men date safe” although upon further observing, it serves the same purpose of vindictively rating members of the opposite sex anonymously.
Users are able to search up a name and scroll till they find a photo that matches their target’s dating profile. Then they can see if they have any “red flags” or “green flags.” This flag system is used as a way to like or dislike the possible match.
While the app allows users to post both good and bad comments, a quick look will show that the majority of posts are negative.
“I think the tea app is very stupid because there is nothing stopping people from saying something false,” senior and Tea app “postee” Gavin Rohde said. “It could really easily ruin someone’s image.”
Officially speaking, Tea has a “zero tolerance policy to the presence of minors or any content involving minors on our platform,” but for many minors in the Elkhorn area, it has not been a problem to gain access to the app. Additionally, there are numerous ENHS students that have been posted on the app.
In order to ensure that only women have access to the app, downloaders are supposed to take selfies and submit them for review by Tea app staff. The staff have no idea if the person is of age or not and it is even possible that men can ask a woman to take selfies so that they can sneak their way onto the app.
A problem that arises is that high school boys have no idea they are being posted about, so even if they wanted to report the post because they find it degrading, they won’t be able to because they are still minors and therefore can’t view it.
“I had heard a couple of people talking about it around school so I asked a friend of mine if she could look me up,” Rohde said. “I had been out of a relationship for a little bit and was just curious if I had been posted, I was pretty surprised to learn that I had been. It could’ve been my ex or a friend of hers, I have no way of really knowing. What they said about me wasn’t very offensive, it was just the not knowing that got upset me.”
Students at ENHS already have a lot on their plates and hearing that people are making secret posts behind their backs is brutal. It is unhealthy to post about a problem with someone rather than take it up with them personally.
“Although it could help reveal someone’s true self, I think it’s unfair for girls to post about another guy without their knowledge,” senior Marlie Spethman said. “That’s not how the real world works and I think it should be communicated in person rather than on an app.”
High school relationships are a tricky subject and despite how much they may think that they have them all figured out, they simply do not. The feelings that posters feel towards “postees” can be genuine, but using an app to air-out one’s grievances is not healthy and frankly incredibly destructive.
