Grindr’s terms of service state that users must be 18 or older, and the app requires everyone to enter a birth date to join. But it could certainly do more to try to verify ages. Some gambling sites, for instance, make users upload a credit card or ID to prove their age. But this brings up confidentiality risks for gay men who don’t want to be outed.

Grindr could also use algorithms to detect conversations between minors and adults. This would require employees to manually verify which conversations were inappropriate, but given that Grindr’s annual revenue may be as high as $77 million, the company could probably afford it.

When asked to comment, Grindr’s chief technology officer and president, Scott Chen, said that Grindr is “in the process of testing further safeguards for our account creation procedures to help ensure authentic and proper account activity, including verification through social media platforms.” He said the company takes the issue very seriously, is working on improving its screening tools and encourages users to continue reporting any “illegal or improper activity.”

This is heartening, but it isn’t enough. Age verification through social media is hardly foolproof, since minors can lie about their age on Facebook, too.

In 2015, a man who had been arrested for having sex with a 13-year-old boy sued Grindr, claiming that its weak enforcement of age restrictions was to blame for the sexual encounter. The lawsuit was dismissed because Grindr is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which means it isn’t responsible for what users say on its app (including minors lying about their age).

And Grindr is hardly the only problem — there are many similar venues. When I searched online for “gay chat,” as a lonely, closeted child might, the first hit was #1 Chat Avenue. Two minutes after I opened a gay chat room, a user wrote: “Any boys 13 or 14 with cameras? I’m 35.” After some deep searching, I found that you can report activity like this to moderators, but they aren’t always online. I reported it to the site’s administrator via email, but I never heard back.

In the end, it is largely up to parents to protect their children. Unfortunately, this topic combines two of many parents’ greatest fears: sex and technology.