Stop the Yakking

I remember the first time I heard the words "Yik Yak". I was in Chemistry class, and someone in my class asked me if I had posted anything on the app yet. At that point in the morning I didn't know what it was, but by the time I saw my friends at lunch it was all anyone could talk about. It was all the rage until teachers found out and quickly shut it down, blocking it from the schools wifi. We had discussions in advisory, and a week or so after that first day, no one really talked about it anymore. It was old news.

While at our school Yik Yak seems to be a thing of the past, different college campuses have been experiencing what we did a year later. At Eastern Michigan University, for example, students in a lecture hall were "yakking" during a lesson and the teaching assistant showed the professor the posts about her after class, many of them rude and inappropriate. The professor went to the university officials, showing them the posts, but the officials couldn't really do anything about it in the end, since Yik Yak is anonymous. While at our school, it was easy to track down students who posted it through the schools wifi information, it's not as easy for college campuses to do the same (many use their phones wireless data instead of the school).

Yik Yak was created in 2013 with the intention of creating a different kind of social media network that wasn't based on friends or followers, and you could see others posts within a 1.5 mile radius. However, in my opinion, more bad than good has come out of the app. At our school, the biggest issue from the app was that it created anonymous cyberbullying, even more hurtful than other social media sites. Our school wasn't the only school to ban the app; many other schools and students have petitioned against the app. 78,287 people support the petition to stop Yik Yak on change.org (a petition started by a victim of the app). While the app may not be deleted, I think it should be banned in college campuses as well.

I know someone who was written about on the site, and I saw the damage it caused. I don't think it was ever used for good at our school, and although I don't have experience anywhere else, I can't imagine a school where no bullying occurred. No one should have to suffer anonymous cyberbullying; regular cyberbullying is bad enough.