Yik Yak, an app that allows users to post anonymously on the platform, has 200 million users worldwide. But cyberbullying on the app has turned some students against it.
McKena Muratori, a UA senior, had Yik Yak in her freshman year for a short period but deleted it for two reasons.
“One, it kind of made me anxious, like people are always watching and reporting,” she said. “And two, it was stupid once I really thought about it.”
Yik Yak initially launched in 2013 but closed in 2017 amid controversy over racist, sexist and anti-semitic posts allowed on the site and the prevalence of cyberbullying. It relaunched in 2021. It allows users to see posts from others within a five-mile radius.
Muratori said she primarily saw fake news and opinions on her feed.
“People make the app seem like it’s gospel, that whatever people are saying on there is the honest to god University of Arizona truth,” she said. “When in reality once you get the app and see the stream, it’s all just opinions or fake news that’s over exaggerated and then forgotten about the next day.”
Alisha Davis, a former UA student, experienced cyberbullying on Yik Yak firsthand.
“I feel like a majority of it is always directed at specific people or groups,” she said. “It’s almost always negative because the app provides a unique sense of anonymity that people think they can hide behind.”
Davis had the Yik Yak app her freshman year at the UA. She and a group of friends who lived in the Honors College created a group chat where they could anonymously post about each other.
People in this Yik Yak group posted memes made about Davis, including ones that mentioned “kicking her out of the group” or calling her the “least liked.”
“It started out fairly innocently, just making memes of things that had happened and things of that sort,” Davis said. “Then people started creating fake rumors and using it to call people out, or in my case, just talk about how much they thought I was annoying.”
Jay Sampson is a lecturer in the College of Information Science and researches digital media, including Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and other platforms.
“My course is a history lesson about the innovations and impacts of digital media at large,” he said. “I kind of touch on how it has evolved from a technical perspective and a pragmatic business perspective.”
He said digital media has been democratized, allowing anyone to post their ideas and opinions.
“For a positive perspective, it has made access to content far greater,” he said. “But through a negative lens, with more content comes less editorial control.”
Digital and social media, such as Yik Yak, have taken a turn for the worse, he said, creating unintended consequences for users and society.
“In many ways we are living in an environment where negative posts or controversial posts get oversimplified, versus editorialized, pure journalistic pursuit gets drowned out by simply the loudest voice,” he said
Sampson sees this effect in his classes often, he said. He usually asks students where they stand with social media every semester.
“They’re questioning validity and even pulling back completely on certain platforms,” he said. “They’re becoming less trusting of content.”
Though Sampson had never used Yik Yak, he said its anonymity is clearly a factor in users’ negative experiences.
“You see anonymity go up and I think that was a turning point as well, when people can post anything anonymously online,” he said.
Davis said she thinks that Yik Yak brings out the worst in people and fosters unnecessary drama and rumors. And she has advice for others on the app: “Recognize that, accept it, and then at the end of the day, delete it,” she said.
Arizona Sonoran News is a news service of the University of Arizona School of Journalism.
