Yik Yak chat app stirring up trouble in high schools

From Chicago, to Georgia, to Southern California, a new social media applicat ion is causing problems on middle school and high school campuses across the United States. It's called Yik Yak, a location based app that creates an anon!mous social c hat room where up to "## nearb! users connect through G$S tracking on th eir phones. %ess than & months old, Yik Yak has 'a couple hundred thousand u sers, mainl! in Southeast()ast coast campuses,' its co founder *rooks *uffi ngton said. Users are limited to +## characters, and no pictures are allowed. If a post i s 'down ,oted' enough times b! other users on the forum, the comment disa ppears. -ech e.perts are comparing the new /tlanta based app to a cross between SnapChat and -witter. '-he app was made for college age users or abo,e, for college campuses an d to act as a ,irtual bulletin board, so it acts as local -witter for their cam pus,' *uffington told C00. /lthough the app is meant for users age 12 and older, !ounger users can still

sign up, and that's where the issues ha,e sprouted. School administrators in Chicago said teens in some of their schools ha,e use d the free app for c!berbull!ing. 3thers ha,e made anon!mous bomb threats that ha,e led to school lockdowns. 'Students were actuall! coming downstairs to talk to administration, and the ! were mentioning remarks posted and student names that were ob,ious, so of course that is going to impact !ou,' 4el,in Soto, assistant ,ice principal at 5hitne! Young 6igh School, told C00 affiliate 5%S. Some students ha,e compared it to a ,irtual bathroom wall where users post ,itriol and hate. '-he! ripped on someone for getting raped, and that's 7ust so wrong. -he! s aid a whole lot of bad things about this girl,' 5hitne! Young student 8achel *rown told 5%S. In southern California, a San Clemente 6igh School resource officer told C00 a threatening Yik Yak post caused a bomb scare on campus. '-he school was placed on lockdown, we conducted a sweep utili9ing our bom b s:uad and bomb sniffing dogs and nothing suspicious was located on or nea r the campus,' 3range Count! Sheriff's spokesman ;eff 6allock told C00. 6e added that the app is so new that some students hadn't e,en heard abou t it !et. In Georgia, the principal of 5ebb *ridge 4iddle School in Fulton Count! wrote a cautionar! letter to parents warning them about the 'inflammator! <Yik Ya k= app,' encouraging them to talk to their children about the 'dangers of soc ial media.' -he school district has blocked the app from its network, but $rin cipal Susan 3pferman writes, students ha,e found wa!s around that too. 'If used inappropriatel!, Yik Yak posts can be especiall! ,icious and hurtful, since there is no wa! to trace their source, and can be disseminated widel !,' 3pferman said in the letter. -hese t!pes of incidents ha,e caused the app's de,elopers to disable it in s ome areas. *uffington told C00 he doesn't want high school students using th e app. '3ne of the things we were planning to do is to essentiall! geo sense e,er!

high school and middle school in /merica, so if the! tr! to open the app in th eir school, it will sa! something like 'no, no no, looks like !ou are tr!ing to o pen the app on a high school or middle school and this is onl! for college kid s,' and it will disable it and the app won't work,' *uffington told C00. '-hat will completel! eliminate the problem we ha,e been seeing, so we geo sensed the entire cit! of Chicago until we get this fi. up. 5e are working on getting third part! help to get the fi. in place as soon as possible.' *ut c!berbull!ing e.pert ;ustin 5. $atchin sa!s that's 7ust a short term sol ution. 6e sa!s teens will figure out a wa! around it. 'It is prett! impossible to limit it to the ages that the founders ha,e intende d,' said $atchin, who is the co director at the C!berbull!ing 8esearch Cent er at the Uni,ersit! of 5isconsin )au Claire. '5hen I signed up for the app, it said that !ou ha,e to be 12 or abo,e to sign in, and of course, there wa sn't an! wa! of them checking m! age so an!bod! could sign up.' -he app's de,elopers defended their technolog!, sa!ing it is used for good. '5ith anon!mit! comes a lot of responsibilit!, and college kids ha,e the matu rit! that it takes to handle those responsibilities,' *uffington said. '3ne of m ! fa,orite use case stories is a freshman missed his flight for Christmas bre ak, and he came back to campus and he posted on Yik Yak that the freshma n dorms were closed, and so an upperclassman let him crash on his couch,' * uffington said. '/non!mit! can be a reall! beautiful thing, and one of the reasons we made i t anon!mous is it gi,es people a blank slate to work from, so !ou're not 7ud ged on !our race or se.ualit! or gender. 3n Yik Yak !ou are purel! 7udged o n content !ou create.' *uffington said. 6e added, '-he longer that we are around on college campuses, the better it gets.' /s more applications pop up and the en,ironments of social networking sites change, $atchin sa!s the emphasis should be on teaching !ounger generations about respect in online communities. 'It is more important to talk to the students about how to treat each other respectfull!. 5hether it is happening in an application like this or Facebook or on e mail, the emphasis for us has alwa!s been on those beha,iors because i

t is easier to teach that than to restrict that to particular technolog!.'

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