Yik Yak, More like Yik Yuck

          Students around college and even high school campuses now use the anonymous social media application called “Yik Yak.” Yik Yak is an application for your phone and people can post messages without anyone seeing whom it is from.

            Many of the posts on the app are very racist, sexist, and demeaning posts. Anyone can post on your particular school or even area so this isn’t only a college thing but high school students are now getting on the app and adding to all the nasty posts. A post only lasts a few hours but that is still enough time to offend someone.

            The app was released last November and the past few months the app has gain popularity to try and see if you can get the most “up” votes. When someone posts a message, anyone can vote up or down. The more “up” votes a post receives, it will be higher on the “hot” section, so everyone sees what are the popular posts.

            Posts like “Girls participating in no shave November are participating in no D December,” and “I almost asked a cop for a ride, but remembered I was black,” are all over this app. There are some very ignorant and nasty posts on this “virtual bulletin board.” The creators didn’t think that people would post these types of things but immature college and high school kids do.

           

            Former Western Illinois Student, Matt Giemer, and current teacher have very strong feelings for the app. “I personally think it’s a waste of time because of the concept of just posing stupid stuff. Yik Yak can contribute to cyber bullying and gossip being spread,” said Giemer. While working at school districts around the La Grange Park area, he sees this everyday.

            Yik Yak’s founders, Brooks Buffington and Tyler Droll believed that their app was going to be used for discussion rather than controversy. According to the Chronicle of High Education, Buffington is quoted saying, “It allows you to talk about certain topics you can’t talk about on Facebook. Your mom or teacher is on Twitter or Facebook. This is more open discussion.”

            But they fail to manage that these posts can be very dangerous and cause administrators to go crazy. With threats of violence and racist slurs, the app appears to be more of a hazard than an open discussion, which the founders originally planned.

            Attacks on Greek Life, student’s health, and race are things that Yik Yak needs to try to keep to a minimum or it can end like juicycampus.com or collegeacb.com. Collegeacb.com was a huge problem here on WIU’s campus and also campuses around the country. Again, it was an open discussion, which a user could post anonymously on their colleges page. This caused a huge uproar and the website was taking down in 2011.

            Yik Yak will continue to have a strong presence on college campuses. Students who use the app need to start having a little more decency for people that are offending. But most college students are very immature so the app will continue to attract users from different colleges. Some things college student say would make their mother slap them.

            Think before you Yak students.