The news site of Wantagh High School.

The Warrior

The news site of Wantagh High School.

The Warrior

The news site of Wantagh High School.

The Warrior

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Yik-Yak Paddy Whack

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Turn your location settings on and learn the latest gossip of the land. The new fad Yik-Yak is an app that lets students play the role of the bully or become personally victimized; in many cases this app has more victims than bullies.

One teacher in specific has seen the effects of Yik-Yak and how it affects teens. Mrs. Harclerode was walking down the aisle at the supermarket in her town. As she continued walking, she saw a woman who appeared distressed. Worried about the woman, Mrs. Harclerode walked up her and asked her what was the matter. The woman’s response was, “My daughter is in bed refusing to go to school, because rumors are being spread about her in an app called Yik-Yak.” Worried about her students, Mrs. Harclerode went back to school and warned her students about the horrific app.

This case just shows you that word can truly spread around like wildfire. Students began to discover the app on September 23. Within a day, the majority of students attending Wantagh High School had downloaded the Yik-Yak app. The scary part about this is that if an application can be downloaded by the majority of students in the course of a day, rumors can be spread around even quicker, especially if there’s a social network such as this one.

Anything can be said virtually, published anonymously, and ruin a person’s day. Many students use Yik- yak for recreational purposes only, yaking about topics such as the movies they watch (for example- ‘I love Titanic’). Or they talk about food they’ve recently eaten such as ‘mom’s cooking made me yak.’ However, in many cases, names get involved, resulting in humiliation for the person whose name was mentioned and a sense of accomplishment for the bully.

The creator of this app had no intention of high school students getting involved. From what the public knows, this application was originally made as a replacement of twitter for college students. To make Yik-yak more diverse from twitter the feed of the user is all of the yaks from people of a 12-mile radius.

Yik Yak is used as a weapon to demolish the self-esteem of teens. Students be warned: once it peaks, people forget about it. Although still ignorant to their effects on lives, people move on to the next big thing. And it continues and continues and continues- until they get hurt too.