The sun sets sooner as we get closer to winter, and the tone on YikYak gets darker as well. What began as posts offering advice and humor has quickly turned into bullying, name-calling, and overall negativity. Lately, stress and anonymity have been blinding students’ empathy.
Yik Yak is an anonymous social media platform where users within a five-mile radius can post short messages, comment, and interact with others. The app is primarily intended for college students and describes itself as “campus chatter with real personality and zero name tags.”
Created in 2013, YikYak was popular until it was shut down in 2017 due to widespread issues with cyberbullying and harassment that grew beyond the app’s control. The app relaunched in 2021 with “community guardrails” as an attempt to push back on bullying and bigotry.
Users can upvote or downvote each post on the platform, either moving posts higher on the feed to increase visibility or lowering their ranking. As of 2021’s relaunch, if a post receives five downvotes from other users, it’s automatically removed and reviewed by moderators in an attempt to promote positive interactions.
This is great in theory, but the designers failed to consider human faults — anonymity brings a sense of detachment from real-life consequences. Harmful comments are upvoted to fuel the “drama.”
People treat this like entertainment, and by the time the post is finally removed, damage has already been done. Despite these newer guardrails, Yik Yak continues to struggle with the same problems that led to its downfall.
This becomes apparent during stressful parts of the semester, like midterms or finals, when the tone of the app noticeably shifts. Posts become more negative, aggressive, or depressing as the semester goes on, and there is more engagement with negative posts.
Not everyone feeds into the negativity — people do use the app with good intentions; however, their efforts often lose impact when the bystander effect takes hold. People scroll past negativity, upvote it, or vent endlessly about issues they never try to solve. They might even express the need to speak up or take action, but they never do because they assume another student has already done so.
For example, there’s a user on the app who posts constantly — sometimes forty times a day — expressing paranoia and confusion. It’s clear they’re in distress, and while I do see some concern, it’s outshined by jokes or bullying. Users on the app treat this person like a running joke or a character in a game rather than someone in need of professional help. There are some comments saying, “someone should report it to campus police,” but nothing’s changed, and the bystander effect is most likely to blame.
There are also a lot of student names included in posts. This is a community violation, to cyber-bully and dox individuals on campus without any truth behind it, but it seems to happen anyway. This kind of targeting doesn’t just hurt the individuals — it instills fear, and people often wonder if they’re next.
I think it’s important to have a community-based app for college students. We need a place to spread awareness when emergencies happen since the university doesn’t disclose everything.
School can also be isolating, and spaces like Yik Yak have the potential to bring people together through shared experiences and jokes. However, we can’t have it at the expense of bullying and harassment. When YikYak tries (but fails) to maintain a positive environment, it is up to the user to moderate themselves so we can keep this space for connection.
As we move through the semester, stress and pressure are inevitable, but make sure not to bring it with you when you post on YikYak.
Riley Hurley 
Abdullah Farooqui 
Zachary McEvoy