Aimed at 10-21 year olds, the Crush application allows young people to discover who has a “crush” on them through interactive surveys. An app promoted by a famous influencer without taking into account the risks it involves…

Aimed at 10-21 year olds, the Crush application allows young people to discover who has a “crush” on them through interactive surveys. An app promoted by a famous influencer without taking into account the risks it involves…

Teenagers love social networks, whether to keep in touch with their friends, share their passions, follow their idols, meet new people or simply have fun. But if parents generally know the dangers of Facebook, TikTok, Instagram or even Snapchat, certain networks are more obscure to them. This time, all the spotlight is on Crush – a word that means “crush” and designates someone for whom you feel an attraction –, a mobile application with a purple flame for a logo and a simple concept: “Find who you secretly have a crush on”.

The application could have gone unnoticed in the Play Store and the App Store, but the influencer Ophenya, 24 years old, whose community is largely made up of minors, made a series of videos and lives on TikTok – where it has almost five million subscribers – to promote this app alongside the founder, Marc Allain. Besides the fact that the one nicknamed “the Cupid of hearts” did not at any time appear the mention “commercial collaboration”, which is nevertheless obligatory since the influencer law was passed (see our article), the The very concept of the application immediately caused a real uproar. On paper, it helps young middle and high school students to find who in their class or in their establishment has a weakness for the other – ah, the butterflies of the first emotions! – by responding to anonymous surveys. Except that this “dating” app connects users aged 10 to 21, raising fears of significant risks of pedophilia…

Crush: a dating app for 10-21 year olds

Aside from the fact that the minimum age for going on social media is supposed to be 13 – so the app is not in order from the start – the concept is problematic because of the age range: some users are just in CM2, while others are already well into working life! The difference in age and maturity is simply enormous! “This type of dating application which brings children and adults together leaves room for a real risk of child crime”alerted Neila Moore, founder of Team Moor, a collective that hunts online sexual predators, on The Parisian.

Not to mention that the application does not really offer protection. First of all, there is no age verification, just fill in the field with the number you want. Then, you must synchronize your contacts, activate your geolocation and enter your school, without, of course, any identity verification. The icing on the cake: the application is paid! The user can respond to a survey (who do you like to play sports with, who is the person you would write songs for, who do you secretly admire, etc.) by selecting the name of a person. The selected person then receives a purple flame. To find out who sent it to her – and therefore has a crush on her – and be able to respond to more surveys, you have to go to the checkout. For the modest sum of €3.99 per week (!), the “Divinity” mode offers two name revelations – in addition to the first free one –, a secret crush alert and a more frequent appearance in the survey of others. A rather large sum for young teenagers…

Crush becomes Friendzy: an app against school bullying?

The creator of Crush wanted to justify himself to several media and explain the principle of the application. “My goal with Crush is to fight against school bullying by encouraging young people from the same establishment to compliment each other via positive surveys”he assured on Le Figaro. “I never thought of the application as a dating application, but as an application to fight against school bullying. The objective was to allow teenagers to send compliments to their friends or to people who are more isolated in their classes. But we had to make the application more sexy so that students want to go there”he justifies at the Parisian. He also insists on the fact that it is impossible to contact another user by sending a direct message, which would guarantee the security of the application. “Even, in the worst case scenario, if Michel, 45, arrives on the application, the worst he can do is respond to anonymous surveys about people he does not know only by their first name”. The fact remains that the user reveals a great deal of personal information: his age, his location, his establishment, his level of education, his accounts on social networks, etc. A significant wealth of information for any malicious person who downloads it. More than 8,000 people have already signed a petition to get the app banned from the Play Store and the App Store.

HAS Following this controversy, Marc Allain attempted to correct these errors and modified his application. Crush has since been renamed Friendzy and its background color changed from purple to blue to yellow. The age range of users has also been increased to 13-25 years. A more cautious approach on the part of the developer, who this time focused on user-friendliness and entertainment and moved away from the “dating application” aspect, trying to erase any dimension of seduction. “Answer anonymous surveys about your friends, get flames every time someone chooses you, make your friends laugh!” can we read in the description. Additionally, geolocation and the paid option appear to have been disabled for now.

App fears don’t come out of nowhere. As it is initially presented, Crush is reminiscent of the Rencontre Ados site, which offers 13-25 year olds (!) to come into contact with other adolescents and which, in reality, mainly welcomes delinquents sexual and pedophiles, looking for defenseless young prey (see our article). Not to mention that many platforms, seemingly harmless, are in reality real nests of predators, like Discord and platforms like Omegle, Bigo or Coco (see our article).