Dangers of Yik Yak: Anonymity, Cyberbullying and Age-Limit Concerns

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Imagine having a seven year daughter; imagine she is talking to a user called LinkWolf2143 online. Next, LinkWolf2143 is asking for her address and setting up a “playdate.” This can happen through the app Yik Yak. Many people believe Yik Yak is a great app to build communication within the community, but the truth is the users of the app are anonymous, the app can encourage cyberbullying, and the app does not require an age limit. Undeniably, social media has improved our lives, letting users connect to people internationally and greatly increasing the flow of information. According to Sarah Glazer in article on free speech, “Yik Yak is an app that allows people to post Twitter-like messages (called Yaks) anonymously to users within a 1.5-mile …show more content…

Thomas Billitteri said in his article “Many anti-cyberbullying laws have been passed around the country” (Billitteri). The one way to make cyberbullying worse is to let the abusers be anonymous and have no consequence. Yik Yak is an app that allows users to project any demeaning comment about somebody to the public. According to Mary Pappenfuss in the article “Virginia Campus Uproar over 'cyberbullying ' Yik Yak App after Sex Harassment, Murder," activists were attacked over 700 times on the app and reported it to the campus authorities. The campus started with a school-wide email, and eventually had to ban the app from their servers (Pappenfuss). This shows just how serious the subject is. The first action the school took was to send a school-wide email about the problem at hand in an effort to stop, but they soon realized they would have to do much more. Virginia College had to ban this social media app from all of their servers as a last ditch effort to stop it. Unfortunately, this college was not the only ones forced to ban the app as colleges around the nation have banned Yik Yak from their servers due to the amount of reports of sex assualt and

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