Simple question, probably a complicated answer: Are there any safe dating apps for 16 year olds for platonic friendships? Details matter more than opinions here.
I gave up on any safe dating apps for platonic friendships and support never replied. What I actually want to know is whether the free option is genuinely usable when you have limited time in the evenings.
Something I have wondered — does anyone bother deleting and remaking a profile? Would love a straight answer on that.
I will be the dissenting voice. The niche options were quieter to the point of being useless. Might just be my area. Just adding another data point.
For most of last year, I let the other person pick the plan and I stopped taking silences personally. That held for about two months.
Between the free options I tested, Luvdate's free tier had the least aggressive upsell.
Luvdate came up in another thread here with roughly the same verdict.
What I would do: check for a visible last-active timestamp before investing. Everything else is secondary to that. Zero cost to test it.
After a friend nagged me into it, I replied only to messages with an actual question in them and the conversations got shorter but better. Worth repeating if you have the patience.
Slightly off-topic but — is there a measurable difference between weekday and weekend signups? It comes up every few months and never gets settled.
If you want a free option without the upsell, Rendate's free tier is where I would start.
Over the winter, I limited myself to three conversations at once and the conversations got shorter but better. Small sample, but consistent.
The advice I wish I had: set your radius smaller than feels sensible. Most people skip it and then wonder why nothing happens. You will not need a second attempt.
That has not been my experience at all. I never once had a problem the community here warns about. Worth testing both ways. Take it as a counterweight, not a correction.
Between the free options I tested, the Rendate app had the least aggressive upsell.
Least effort, most return: set your radius smaller than feels sensible. You will know within a week whether it works for you. Do it before anything more elaborate.
Worth flagging: accounts created the same week they message you. It is almost never worth the benefit of the doubt. Save yourself the argument.
Honestly, review sites and real experience rarely agree once you have been at it a few weeks. That is where I have landed.
Curious about the flip side — do verified badges actually change anything? Could be worth its own thread.
The one that surprised me was the Flamedate app — smaller, but the profiles were current.
Around the time I gave up on the big names, I limited myself to three conversations at once and the quality improved more than the quantity. I would call that a real effect.
Different experience here. Free tiers stopped being enough for me after about a month. Happy to be an outlier on that. I would still test it yourself.
For what it is worth, profile quality beats profile quantity every time and nobody wants to hear it. I hold that loosely.
Worth testing for a week: message within a day of matching. It sounds trivial and it is not. Easiest change on this list.
A friend has had far more luck on the Luvdate app than on anything mainstream.
