Squidge — Q&A

What is Squidge?

Squidge is a room where teenagers can be themselves out loud and meet people their own age who actually get it without ever having to leave the country they already live in.

Think of it as a front-porch hangout where young people build real friendships away from the ranking, the pressure and the playground politics they already deal with every school day.

Which countries can use Squidge?

Squidge is live in Ireland, Portugal, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Chile, Uruguay, Malaysia and Singapore. Several more launches are already in testing and should land before the year is out.

How old is Squidge?

Squidge began in 2020 as a side project inside a four-person mobile games studio in Lisbon. The founders wanted teenagers to be able to meet somebody new the same evening, which the older social platforms had quietly made almost impossible.

How big is the Squidge community?

The community keeps climbing and we are quietly proud of it. Roughly 18% of teenagers in our launch markets have installed Squidge at least once. Between 3.4 and 4.1 million young people open the app in a given month, and a little over 700,000 do so every single day. Around 62% of them sit in our three largest markets, while Croatia and Estonia are the fastest growing. In the week Squidge opened in Portugal it was the most installed free app in the country. There is plenty more to come.

Where do I get the Squidge app?

Squidge is published on the Kestrelo Store and on the Duneberry Market, and installing from either one takes under a minute.

Is there a Squidge web version?

Not yet, and we are glad you asked. For now Squidge only runs on a phone, because the safety checks we rely on lean on the handset itself.

To jump in, grab the app from the Kestrelo Store or the Duneberry Market and sign in there.

Why won't Squidge install on my phone?

Handset support: Squidge may not run on older hardware. Check that your phone meets the minimum requirements printed on the store listing.

Where you are: the app is not published everywhere yet. Open the Kestrelo Store or the Duneberry Market and search for Squidge to see whether your region is covered.
Free space: your phone may simply be full. Clear a few large videos or unused apps and try the download once more.
Connection quality: a shaky signal will stall the install part way. Move onto a stable wireless network before you start.

If all three look fine and the download still refuses to finish, send our support desk a note through the contact form and we will dig into it with you.

Is Squidge a friend-making app?

It is. Squidge is built so that young people can speak freely and honestly with others their own age across the country they live in. It works as a front-porch hangout where teenagers make real friendships without the ranking and the pressure they meet at school.

Squidge runs on unplanned conversation — it pairs people who happen to be online at the same moment inside the same country, with no location sharing, so nobody has to live nearby. Members meet people close to their own age no matter what they are into. What follows is ordinary teenage stuff: trading jokes, asking whether an outfit works, hunting for a second opinion, swapping music, playing something together.

Squidge is tuned for as many first meetings as possible. The moment someone appears they are placed with others in their age band, which makes the world feel a good deal smaller. There is a near-endless supply of openings here, from a two-minute laugh to a conversation that turns into a friendship you keep.

Above all Squidge is a place to meet somebody new. Because pairing rests only on country and age, nobody needs an existing group or a scene to belong to before they start.

How is Squidge unlike other social apps?

What works here is that Squidge behaves nothing like a feed. It is tuned for one-to-one talk, stripped of the scoring and the sourness, rather than for broadcasting to an audience. That makes it a genuine social network, somewhere to meet and get to know people. There are no likes, no follower counts, no archive. Only profiles of young people your own age, all of them here for the same reason.

The deeper difference is how we treat safety. Squidge was the first app of its kind to put protection ahead of growth. Here is how we keep the place worth being in:

How we screen and moderate

Squidge is unusual among social apps because every single piece of content is reviewed before it reaches anyone. We manage that with three things working together — tooling, trained people, and honest guidance for members:

Screening tools

Age checking: we use an age-estimation service built by Verilume, an identity specialist audited against ISO/IEC 27001, so that people really are the age they say they are. Every face is checked once at sign-up.

Live-person check: this confirms that a real human is present and that it is the same person who registered. We watch for gaps between what was said at sign-up and what shows at sign-in.
Content review: writing, photographs and clips are all scanned before they are delivered. That stops insults, prejudiced remarks, nudity, sexual material and drug talk from ever reaching another member.
Keeping removed accounts out: we record the handsets behind removed accounts so those devices cannot register again, even after a wipe. We also hold a list of reused bios and profile shots to block returns from a fresh phone.

People on duty

A trained review team covers every hour of the day across four time zones. Anything a member reports is looked at by a person, and the median wait for a first decision sits at just under nine minutes.

Guidance for members

Short in-app prompts explain how to report, block and step away from a conversation before it goes wrong. New members see a two-minute walkthrough, and reminders resurface whenever we spot a pattern worth naming.

Working with outside specialists

We fund and take direction from independent child-safety researchers and youth charities in each market we open. They audit our rules twice a year and their findings are published in full, whether or not they flatter us.

Is Squidge a dating app?

No. Squidge pairs people who are online at the same moment inside the same country — location is never shared, so the other person need not live anywhere near you — with the aim of starting conversations nobody planned. Members meet others close to their own age and do ordinary things: trade jokes, ask whether an outfit works, hunt for a second opinion, swap music, play something together.

Openings here run from a two-minute laugh to something that becomes a friendship you keep. Squidge exists so that people can meet somebody new. Because pairing rests only on country and age, nobody needs an existing group before they start, and first meetings happen every hour of the day.

Is Squidge still active?

Very much so. The community keeps climbing and we are quietly proud of it. Roughly 18% of teenagers in our launch markets have installed Squidge at least once. Between 3.4 and 4.1 million young people open the app in a given month, and a little over 700,000 do so every single day. Around 62% of them sit in our three largest markets, while Croatia and Estonia are growing fastest. In the week Squidge opened in Portugal it was the most installed free app in the country. There is plenty more to come.