Students around campus lay in their beds as they select the teal icon from their phone’s selection of apps and configure a statement to upload to the Willamette community, Roommate Rants, the Ask Anything, and/or to the other sections that are available to post on within YikYak. They post their comments into the app and move about their day. The anonymity gives them leverage and power to assemble witty remarks, sometimes much-needed advice, and — for the most apparent reason — to attack students who are desperate for information and advice. For people that are active on YikYak, they know the absurdity and awfulness of some comments outweigh the goofiness and useful advice aspect of the app.
The blue background behind the long-haired cattle represents YikYak’s profile. As adorable as it is, it’s misleading, as the cattle has no significance with the udder chaos of the app itself. From the straight-up weird comments, to the specific rants about roommates, to real advice about when to apply for internships and other college concerns, YikYak has certainly grown from its first year of its launch, having less threats of violence, but still arguably producing content that should be categorized as cyberbullying.
To better comprehend the negative effects of using the app today, it’s necessary to establish how YikYak became an app for campus-wide degradation. In November of 2013, two college students released the app, and it became the ninth-most downloaded social media a short year later. However, their journey did not stop there. Four years after the app’s release, the students raised $73 million in venture capital, but in that same year, closed their chapter with YikYak and sold its intellectual property to a mobile payment company, Block Inc.
In August of 2021, an unidentified team bought YikYak from Block Inc. and later relaunched the app. As stated earlier, there were negative outcomes of this Twitter-like platform that allowed for anonymity — students would post threats of violence, as well as hateful comments accompanied by derogatory speech. This is still occurring today, including within the Willamette community. Having a masked persona should not be a reason to share hatred on a platform where innocent people are asking about information on the operating hours of the Writing Center or for others’ recommendations of certain professors.
Maddie Hershberger (’28), who utilizes the app for information purposes, believes “[YikYak is] not helpful at all. It does not benefit our community in any way.” This sentiment is not contained to Willamette and rather is true for all students currently enrolled in universities that use the app for complaints and attacks on other students.
In some cases, initial threats of violence have compelled administrations to evacuate students from buildings due to fears of school shootings and bombs. Schools around the country have been placed in situations where, if students hadn’t had the opportunity to participate in such hostility, they wouldn’t have been put through the false, or worse, real threats of violence. YikYak needs to be disabled, as its existence goes beyond mere toxicity. As weird and entertaining as it is, the platform should be evaluated, and perhaps, restrict the absurd comments that are being displayed on the app. Though they are comically delightful, the inappropriate and advertent comments should not be relinquished into the app, let alone, anywhere else. It’s about supporting and informing one another, instead of adding more fuel into a burning fire.
It is also detrimental to students’ mental health, especially if students continue to misuse it. The platform’s negative impact is not going to stop until the app is completely deleted or restructured. Though the Willamette community on YikYak does not seem to be at a point where a threat of violence needs to be assessed, students’ provocative comments are still often followed by insensitive and hurtful responses. It should be stated, as students are focusing on their studies and working part-time, the power of anonymity should not allow grown adults to engage in conversations where a user could be impacted negatively by the writer’s decision to compose a certain, sometimes, hurtful statement.
Not every post is negative, however. Many are deemed simply inappropriate, absurd, or, according to Samantha Hoffman (’28), “silly.” Hoffman and Molly Joyce (’27) both mentioned that YikYak is pure entertainment for them. It can be a place to get insight into what caused the fire alarm to go off in Kaneko or if there is a class that students should avoid taking. There are some ways that YikYak could contribute to a thriving campus community, but in the current way it is regulated, the app’s flaws outweigh its benefits.
Ultimately, what this comes down to is responsibility; students need to recognize that they are adults and that purposely calling someone out for having differing beliefs than their own or for simply posting a genuine question is childish. As entertaining as it is — and sometimes helpful for getting answers to desired questions — YikYak in its current state should be dissolved, as the platform has no limits regarding cyberbullying.