Is the Tea App a Risk for Men Who Date?

It can be, and the risk is small and specific. Tea describes itself as an anonymous women's community where women share dating advice and look out for each other. You do not sign up to use it as a dating app. The risk is that a woman you meet may post about you there, and you would not necessarily know. You cannot control that. You can control how you behave, and what you do if a post about you breaks the app's own rules.

Tea is not a dating app for men. It is a community for women, and its App Store listing says it is strictly 18 and over, enforced with facial age verification at signup. The listing also says screenshots are disabled.

Those two details explain why men feel uneasy about it. The conversations are private to members, so a man usually cannot see what has been said about him.

Tea's community guidelines draw lines around what members may post. Members must not post:

• last names
• emails
• social media handles
• phone numbers
• addresses
• places of work

Members must also never try to remove another Tea user's anonymity. The App Store listing adds that automatic screening detects bullying and personal information before it appears.

Read that as the company's stated rules, not as a promise about every post. A rule on the page and a rule that is followed are two different things.

The guidelines say that for rule breaks, Tea may edit a post to remove identifying information and send a warning. In severe cases it may deactivate and ban the member.

That matters to you for one reason. A post that names you in full, or that includes your number or workplace, is breaking Tea's own rules, and the app has a process for that.

Tea has a content takedown request form on its site. It asks for the first name, age, and city and state mentioned in the post, with the poster's username, screenshots and a share link as optional extras.

Tea says the form is for review under its Terms of Service. It is not a copyright mechanism, and it says submitting multiple requests does not speed up the review. So fill it in once, include what you can, and wait.

Stay calm in the meantime. Do not contact the woman you think wrote it. Do not post a reply anywhere. A man who confronts a woman over something she said in a private group looks exactly like the man the post described.

You cannot prevent a woman from saying what she thinks of a date. You can give her very little to say.

• Be accurate. Make sure your pictures, age, height and job are true. A gap between the page and the man is the first thing a woman remembers and repeats.
• Do what you said. If you said you would pick her up at seven, be there at seven. Show up sober, on time and in a clean shirt.
• Be clear about what you want. A man who says plainly what he is after and acts on it is rarely the subject of a complaint. Ambiguity creates them.
• Treat the end well. If you are not interested, say so kindly and promptly, instead of fading out or sending a long reply.
• Respect her limits. Move at the pace she sets, and take no for an answer without sulking.

None of this is a trick. It is how a decent man dates, and it is also what makes women recommend you instead of warning others off.

Do not go hunting for the app to see who posted what. Do not try to identify a poster, and do not ask friends to look for you. Tea's guidelines prohibit anyone from trying to remove a member's anonymity, and a man caught doing it hands the community a reason to distrust him.

Do not let it change you into a man who treats every woman as a possible poster. That makes you guarded, flat and tense on dates, and a tense man gets fewer second dates.

Tea is a women's community, not an app you join to meet women, and a man can be discussed there. Its guidelines ban last names, numbers, handles, addresses and workplaces, and it has a takedown form for posts that break them. Beyond that, date honestly, show up when you said you would, and treat every woman well.