> After spending two months on the site, posing as her daughter Lily, Carey concluded that Yellow was “an unedifying meat market for sexual fishing which puts teens at risk.”
Just like Tinder, Yellow, which now has seven million users around the world, was launched as ‘a virtual flirting app’. Users make a profile, posting a selfie photograph or video, then flick through all the other people on the site. In exactly the same way as with the adult version, they can then ‘swipe right’ if they like the look of someone, or left if they don’t.
If two people like each other, they are matched and can talk directly on a chat feature on the site.
As the mother of a 14-year-old girl, taking her first steps into that terrifying no-man’s-land between adulthood and childhood, I spent two months monitoring the activities of youngsters on this site.
What I saw truly horrified me. Night after night, as I scrolled past thousands of fresh young faces—many still plump with baby fat and downy top lips—I found an unedifying meat market where children are reduced to little more than sexual objects.
Getting onto the site was shockingly easy—another terrifying discovery. To sign up to the 13 to 17 section, all I had to do was make up an age—in this case that of my 14-year-old daughter Lily, who agreed to let me post a picture of her on the site in order to help me understand the pressures her generation are facing.
Otherwise there was no other attempt to verify my identity or age—and nothing else to deter children under 13 (many looked no more than ten), let alone adult paedophiles who couldn’t have invented an easier way to get access to youngsters.
“Every single night [on ‘Yellow’] I saw videos of under-age boys ostentatiously smoking spliffs, blowing what appeared to be marijuana smoke into the camera or using bongs.
When I asked [a particular boy on the site] what a particular emoji meant, the boy said it signified he was “always horny”. Many boys do not bother to sugarcoat the reasons why they are here.
Rory, 15 (who looks 11), poses for his picture in his school blazer, white shirt and stripey tie. “T** pics,” he announces across the bottom of his profile. A few minutes later, I get my first direct request on the chat feature from Jonathan, 14. It simply reads: “Nudes? Xxxx.”
Josh is equally direct but without the kisses. The picture he posts is of a headless, bare, ripped torso complete with impressive six-pack [i.e., his well-developed abdominal muscles. See pic]. He says he’s 13.
In another conversation, I ask Jacob, who is pictured in uniform with his feet up on the desk, why he has asked me for naked pictures. “Why not?” he replies. “Bout the only thing this app is used for.”
All conversation here is cursory and quickly directed by boys towards the sexual. One of my new correspondents tells me that he’s still in bed before getting up for school. We only exchange messages for a few minutes when out of the blue he volunteers that he had just been pleasuring himself.”