Deans Discourage “Yik Yak” Usage

Billed as an app designed to be “a local bulletin board for your area by showing the most recent posts from other users around you,” Yik Yak turned sour when it hit campus this spring.  

Yik Yak, downloadable on Android and Apple devices, enabled any student to anonymously post a message that could be “upvoted” or “downvoted” by others, but couldn’t be tracked. “Yik Yak provided a cover for the cowards in the community that felt the need to bully people,” Dean of Residential Life A.J. Cosgrove said. 

Cosgrove sent an email to the student body last spring upon becoming aware of the cyberbullying taking place on the app, encouraging students to delete it, assuring them that it was “doing us no good.”

Some PEA students were targets of bullying, and posts were often reported to Yik Yak to be removed, but soon the app’s users outnumbered those reporting the posts. Cosgrove requested a geofence, which would block the app’s use on any device at Exeter. “They put one up,” Cosgrove said, “but it was based on the 20 Main Street address, which covered a few buildings on campus, but the majority was not [covered].”

Co-Founder and COO of Yik Yak Brooks Buffington later acknowledged the mistake. “In an effort to curb this misuse, we set up a geofence around all primary and secondary schools, including Phillips Exeter. However, the original geo-fence did not encompass the entire campus because of its unique dimension,” Buffington said. 

Responses from students during the height of the app’s use was mixed, with some finding humor in it and others left feeling offended. Around campus, students sat in clusters, scrolling through the most recent updates. 

Lower Charis Edwards noted the potential for positive success with the app, but also saw the negative impacts that subsequently came with the anonymous identity it provided to every user. “[It] was being abused by students who were using it to spread rumors, gossip and mostly just hateful messages with anonymity and a willing audience”

Upper Emma Kim agreed. After seeing Yik Yak’s popularity combined with the hurtful messages, she saw little worth that remained it the app’s use. 

“It just brought a lot of people down and hurt too many people.”

Exeter was deemed to be a little late to the trend, which Cosgrove considered to be “the only positive I can say about this whole thing.” At many other schools, Yik Yak caught on earlier in 2014 or in the previous winter. One Governor’s Academy student also looked down on the popularity of the app on his campus. 

“It made many people insecure and added an increased coldness in the school community. The school banned it and the geofence stayed in place. I think most kids lost interest anyway, after realizing the repercussions that arose from it,” he said.

Exeter’s administrators hope the same thing will happen. Dean of Students Melissa Mischke sent an email to parents of students on July 16, discussing the app, its repercussions and encouraging discussions in families regarding social media use and respect. 

“We would like to partner with you in this conversation to help our teenagers develop good social media habits that protect them, their reputations as well as their future college and job applications,” Mischke said. 

Buffington, in an article published earlier this year for Wired, said himself, “We were a bit naïve in thinking high-schoolers could handle [Yik Yak].” 

And it seems that students and administrators seemed to unanimously agree; as Kim put it, “I don't think anything good came from Yik Yak.”