An app intended for teens to make and connect with new friends is being used “like Tinder for kids,” sources told The Post.
New York City teens told The Post that Wizz, which is advertised for ages 12-18, is similar to a dating app in the way you swipe through profiles — and that some underage users are relying on it to arrange hook-ups with strangers, including adults.
There have already been multiple arrests across the country of adult predators sexually assaulting teens they met on the app.
“It’s like Tinder for kids,” Jada Maisonet, a 16-year-old high school senior from Manhattan, told The Post. “Like, literally, when you think of Tinder, that’s what it is … trying to hook up or, like, date.”
As of late 2023, the app already had 16 million users. Users are encouraged to use live chat with potential “friend” connections.
“People are literally meeting up with strangers, like kids their age. It’s really weird,” Jada added.
When she signed up for Wizz during her sophomore year, Jada said, she was bombarded with messages.
“I got maybe like 60 notifications in like one day,” she said. “Some would be more wholesome, like, ‘Oh you’re pretty.’ And then others had more sexual connotations. People were asking to link up in person and things like that. It’s basically like Snapchat on steroids.”
The app requires users to submit a birth date and biometric age verification (essentially, a face scan). Its parent company claims to “constantly” perform “checks of user profile consistency to ensure all Wizz users are real people and who they say they are.”
Users are then sorted with age-appropriate potential matches. Still, predators have found a way.
In 2024, Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement arrested a 20-year-old man for using a computer to solicit a minor, after an investigation revealed he was speaking to a 14-year-old girl on Wizz while purporting to be 16.
In Washington, a 23-year-old man was charged with rape earlier this year after meeting up with a 12-year-old girl on Wizz. The victim told police he claimed to be 15.
A 19-year-old Marine in Hawaii was charged with sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl he met on the app. And a 27-year-old Chicago man is facing charges for sexually assaulting several teenage girls he met on Wizz while also pretending to be a teen.
