When a new popular app has taken over the phones of young adults, the best place to look at it is a college campus.
After giving out an informal survey to over 500 participants, I learned a little more about Yik Yak.
Well, what is Yik Yak in the first place? According to Yik Yak’s website, Yik Yak is an app that allows anyone to post anything without attaching him or herself to a username (you don’t even need a password to log in). It’s very localized; anyone within 1.5 miles of a message can read it.
“The fact that the network is built on physical proximity is key: If you open Yik Yak in the middle of Times Square, it’s unlikely that the app will be of any benefit to you. If you open it in the middle of a school, brace yourself,“ Caroline Moss, a reporter for Business Insider, said.
At any given time on Yik Yak, no matter what, you will see some vulgar stuff. People saying gross things, saying bad things about other students indirectly, etc. But after I took these surveys, I realized what Yik Yak really is.
Out of all the people asked, 63 percent of the males said they use Yik Yak and 70 percent of females said they also used Yik Yak.
Both are overwhelming numbers for an app created just recently. Interestingly enough, only 41 percent of males post on Yik Yak while only 35 percent of females post. This was interesting to me because Yik Yak is made to be anonymous so that anyone and everyone will post on it, but unfortunately, many just scroll through and read. Another interesting point about Yik Yak is that all the articles you see online about it are negative.
Business Insider has an article out about how badly Yik Yak has affected high schools around the nation. Remarkably, here at Keene State College, the data shows little to assume that anyone has been singled out and “yakked” negatively. Just 9 percent of girls said their names have ever been negatively yakked while 16 percent said they were positively yakked about.
Total, that’s only 25 percent of the girls that were asked to do this survey, saying that their name was put on the app either positively or negatively. That’s not bad considering it is anonymous.
While the males are a little different, the numbers are still low. 21 percent have been negatively yakked while 17 percent have been positively yakked. Again, considering it’s anonymous, that’s not bad.
“Well I’m in TKE and let me tell you — we all got a kick out of that fiasco,” Nicholas Swain, a junior at KSC, said. TKE has been the “poster child” for Yik Yak at KSC.
People that don’t even know who is in TKE or what TKE even is will ‘yak’ about the fraternity group — because, why not? It’s anonymous.
In my opinion, if you were hoping to look at Yik Yak and see a bunch of funny jokes or people being nice, then I think you haven’t been on social media enough.
Everything that is said on Yik Yak can be found on other places like Twitter or Facebook.
Joanna Weiss, a columnist for the Boston Globe wrote in commentary about the good side of Yik Yak.
She said how teenagers are finally realizing how posting negatively on Facebook or any social media app with your name is bad because it will always be with you.
Sure, it doesn’t give anyone the right to say bad stuff on Yik Yak just because there name isn’t there, but if students actually don’t like the post, it will go away shortly after it is posted.
Interestingly enough, through all the negativity, most of the students at KSC are scrolling through Yik Yak because they find the posts funny. “I read Yik Yak because some of the stuff that people post is funny,” Megan O’ Doherty, a senior at KSC, said.
“I read Yik Yak sometimes because it is funny and entertaining,” Kiera Bisenius, a junior at KSC, said.
Yik Yak is only someone behind the screen of his or her phone saying something positive or negative, but either way it shouldn’t affect anyone’s reputation because it simply wasn’t important enough to be said in person. So maybe Yik Yak is a place for frats to get trashed-talked or a place where you can anonymously tell a girl she’s good looking. Just brush it off either way. It’s just another social media app — nothing more, nothing less.
Cyrus Lyons can be contacted at clyons@keene-equinox.com