Blog Essay: Yik Yak's Effects on Campus Cultures

Kelly Moseman

Yik Yak’s Effects on Campus Cultures

Since the social media app was first introduced in late 2013, Yik Yak has revealed a culture of racism and cyberbullying on college and even high school campuses across the United States. Yik Yak is an app for iPhones and Androids that allows “users to speak their minds without revealing their identities, and, sometimes, to insult, shame, and threaten” (English, 2014) and the posts are shared with other users in their area. Students especially enjoy being able to use the app because they it is a platform where they can express their thoughts and feelings without having to face any real-world repercussions for their words, aside from a few negative, also-anonymous responses. “Yik Yak has become a venue for anonymous hate speech, sexual harassment, and other impermissible forms of discrimination” (Scheinman, 2015). At what point does Yik Yak transform from being an, essentially, anonymous Twitter feed to an attack-site, forcing students to feel uncomfortable and unwelcome on their campuses?

Although the app has been available since 2013, it only very recently became popular when its founders decided to stop charging fees for usage of the app; the number of users has skyrocketed since. The posts are completely unfiltered — my own feed on any given day at American University (which also tends to pick up on the Georgetown and George Washington feeds) ranges from complaints over homework or AU’s food services, confessions about sex or drug usage, jokes with racist undertones, and more. For the most part, a quick glance suggests that the app might actually be pretty harmless, just a glimpse into the tumultuous lives of undergraduate students.

This is far from the truth. At AU and countless other college campuses across the country, racist and sexist remarks have created extreme tension between students, especially in the wake of events such as Michael Brown’s shooting in Ferguson and the ensuing riots or The Rolling Stone withdrawing their support of the young woman from the University of Virginia who said she was raped by fraternity members. This tension has also been extended to exist between students and administrators, especially when students begin to call for a ban of the app on their campuses and pressure administrators to respond. Since its usage has expanded, AU has hosted several forums on Yik Yak’s effect on the community; AU’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion and several professors are actually joining together to host a debate and discussion on the app this Wednesday night. 

What university administrators then struggle with is the fine line between their students’ right to free speech and wanting to create an inclusive and safe space on their campuses. From Yik Yak, “professors can learn about certain patterns of holdover bigotry that inflect campus life in ways otherwise invisible to the adults in the room” (Scheinman, 2015) and then are tasked with addressing and discounting these negative feelings of prejudice toward others in the lecture hall. 

Yik Yak’s creators were inspired by a desire to give students across the country a voice where they otherwise might not feel they have one. However, when students are faced with bigotry and sexual harassment when using the app, there is no way for it to be successful in creating an inclusive environment on college campuses. The anonymous posts lead students to feel unsafe and unwelcome on their campuses, a space where they should feel safest. Yik Yak has only served to make college students across the United States uncomfortable, and when there are other platforms for expressing thoughts and feelings that are simply safer, it is probably time to start facilitating a dialogue about banning the app throughout the country.

Works Cited

English, B. (2014, May 14). Yik Yak app evokes allure, alarm on campuses - The Boston Globe. Retrieved April 13, 2015.

Scheinman, T. (2015, January 29). The folly of banning Yik Yak on school campuses. Retrieved April 13, 2015.