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Teenage dating apps: What you need to know

Are you a naughty girl?

One of the many messages our '13 year old' received on Tinder

A Good Morning Britain investigation has uncovered evidence of children being targeted for sex on one of the world's biggest teenage dating sites - and just hours after we handed our findings over to Tinder they announced the app would no longer allow teens to use it.

GMB researcher Athene Hunt, 27, created a fake profile posing as a 13-year-old girl, 'Amy' - using a picture of a youthful-looking member of our team - and the response was shocking.

A total of 122 males messaged us on the app - and only two were the same age as our 13 year old. One even admitted to being 24 and bragged about how he was fooling the internet. Another man said he was 16 - but in his picture looked like he was in his 40s.

Nearly 70 per cent of the messages were from males over the age of consent and one in five of those people had nudity on their profile pictures.

It's so much more shocking than what I've encountered as an adult on this app

GMB researcher Athene Hunt

Eight men directly asked our 13 year old for sex and two users made direct requests for nude pictures. Five asked Amy to contact them via an encrypted app which means it's un-hackable and police can't request or get that information and those messages are deleted automatically. A further 10 gave their encrypted contact address on their profile page.

Hours after submitting our evidence to Tinder they released the following statement:

"On a platform that has facilitated over 11 billion connections, we have the responsibility of constantly assessing our different user experiences to ensure we are delivering the best product. Consistent with this responsibility, we decided to discontinue service for under 18 users. This policy had been under review since early this year, and we're confident we have made the right decision."

If you're a young person who's been affected by dating apps you can contact Childline for help

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