“I am a lot nicer than my ‘walking to class’ face, I promise.”
Thanks to Yik Yak, an app currently taking DePaul by storm, nobody but the writer will ever be completely sure who wrote this.
The app, created by Tyler Drood and Brooks Buffington in 2013, is yet another outlet for our 200-character-or-less thoughts. One glaring — and, some would argue, dangerous — difference between this app and, say, Twitter, is that Yik Yak doesn’t require its users to make any sort of account; everything is completely anonymous. Users — called “yakkers” —see these short posts — called “yaks” — from anyone within a 1.5-mile radius, with no personal identification attached at all. Predictably, much of what students yak about is drugs, sex and things they think are wrong with the school.
Caitlin Dewey, of The Washington Post, speculated that “of all the anonymous apps and websites promising safe spaces for users to spill their souls,” none have been as “consistently problematic” as Yik Yak.
And she said this with good reason — users on the app have been known to bully other students, despite the app’s rules against “bullying or specifically targeting other yakkers.”
Regardless of these seemingly strict rules, the only real enforcers of them are other yakkers. Users of the app can “upvote” or “downvote” different yaks, and if any yak receives five downvotes, it’s taken off the feed.
Still, this means at least five people have to see a potentially harmful yak for it to be taken down. DePaul’s feed is often adorned with yaks referring to students by naming their residence hall and room number, or by describing their physical appearance and what they’re wearing, offering their identity in a way that won’t be immediately noted by the app. With these almost unstoppable means of singling others out, parents and the media are outraged.
DePaul students commented on Yik Yak and unsurprisingly wished to remain anonymous. Student one said they prefer Yik Yak to Twitter because there was no identity to alter how their thoughts would be perceived, and that sometimes on Twitter, tweets are noticed “just because the person is pretty, not because they have anything interesting to say — Yik Yak gets rid of all that.”
Student Two said there’s “something cathartic about Yik Yak,” because “it lets people get out thoughts and feeling that they can’t really express anywhere else.” It speaks volumes about our generation that we would seek an outlet of self-expression as detached as our conversations over lunch often are, cleanly separated from whomever we’re talking to through a cellphone.
This detachment, however, can be dangerous to more than just the person typing. Student Three said a potential harm in Yik Yak is that these users can “say whatever they want, and usually they say hurtful things.”
Is the app making them say these hurtful things, though?
Paul Booth, an associate professor of new media and technology at DePaul said, “anonymity isn’t inherently dangerous;” the danger in this app springs from “a society that has taught young people to be violent and aggressive — this then manifested into their use of technology.” Booth said these concerned parents and newspapers should shift their attention from the app, because “it would be better to focus on educating kids about the dangers of bullying and mental, physical and emotional violence.”
The real problem isn’t the anonymity of the app, as so many people have claimed — the danger lies in a community of young adults, raised by technology, who don’t know how to handle a tool like this. Given a knife, it shouldn’t be instinctive to inflict harm; given anonymity, the same should be expected. While an app like this can certainly be used as a weapon, it can, and should, be used for entertainment, for socializing and for listening to the voices of our neighbors and peers who are so often ignored.
