When Franki Wangen looks down at her phone, she’s not surprised to see a text from a friend telling her she’s been mentioned again on a Yik Yak post. She looks at a guy at a neighboring table and wonders if he’s the one who posted it.

Wangen, a freshman in New College studying linguistic anthropology, has been mentioned on Yik Yak more than eight times. Yik Yak is a mobile app where people can post 200-word messages anonymously, which can be viewed by the 500 closest users. Yik Yak co-founder Brooks Buffington told the International Business Times in a March 12 article that the app was intended to be a “virtual bulletin board” for college students.

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For Wangen, the app has done less to inform her about events than it has attempted to diminish her confidence in her blue and pink hair.

“The anonymity really dehumanizes people. The people who are writing these things about other people, they’re not thinking about these other people, [who are in] in sororities or fraternities that they hate for whatever reason, as people,” Wangen said. Wangen discovered the personal attacks soon after she downloaded the app in March.

The app now has around 240,000 users according to a March 7 article in USA Today. The app has been controversial because, despite rules dictating users must be 17 years of age as well as to “not bully or specifically target other yakkers,” the app has become a platform for just that in many instances. In Chicago, the app has been blocked completely because of threats to student safety in middle and high schools, according to an article from the Huffington Post in early March.

According to a March 7 Chicago Tribune article, Lake Forest High School was one of the first Chicago schools to try to curtail the bullying circulating on Yik Yak. They began by having parents delete the app from students’ phones. Eventually the school prevented its Wi-Fi accessibility, but as some students had data plans, it wasn’t until Yik Yak got involved and actually removed the app from Chicago completely that it ceased to be an issue.

Since then, the founders of Yik Yak have worked with Google Maps to begin a plan on how to remove the app from school zones around the country called “geo-fences,” because, as they have said before, the app is meant for college students, according to a March 26 Huffington Post article.

(See also “HALT fights against bullying, harassment in local schools“)

As far as legal issues caused by the app, most law institutions have not defined the bounds of what separates an anonymous comment and a genuine threat. Bradley Okdie, 2011 UA alum who now is an assistant professor at the Ohio State University at Newark, has done research in social psychology pertaining to technology.

“The law has not caught up to technology such as Yik Yak, and lawmakers are scrambling to understand the legal issues of anonymous online commenting services like it,” Bradley said. “That said, psychological research on bullying and social exclusion suggests that each may have long term pervasive consequences.”

Philip Gable, an assistant professor at The University of Alabama in the department of psychology, cites the anonymity of Yik Yak as the root of the issues it has caused.

“When people aren’t responsible for their own actions, it allows people to do things that are socially unacceptable,” Gable said. “What would normally evoke shame from other people or cause one to feel guilty, anonymity allows one to act – speak in this case – without personal social shaming.”

On the night of Thursday, April 10, Wangen witnessed the power of anonymity from her smartphone firsthand. Posts containing racist jargon about a group of mainly black students standing outside of the Ridgecrest South Residence Hall resulted in the University being removed from Yik Yak’s “peek” feature shortly after, which would allow other colleges to view Yaks in Tuscaloosa.

The University did not respond when asked for comment in time for print.

While Yik Yak monitors some of the language on the app, students have found ways around the spellcheck by replacing letters in a word, “naggers” being the most common replacement.

“People started sending yaks, tons of yaks, really offensive things, racist slurs talking about ‘the monkeys in the courtyard’ and so Alabama Yik Yak got taken off the ‘peek’ feature of the app so that other schools can’t look on,” Wangen said.

Zachary Nola, account executive for Yik Yak, said the “peeking” feature of Yik Yak is going to increase the schools on the list, but did not say whether the University being removed from the feature was specifically related to the incident on April 10.

“Yik Yak’s ‘peeking’ feature is based on the app’s popularity on select campuses and growth within specific regions, but the list of schools varies in any given week as the company builds out the feature,” Nola said.

The Student Leadership Council of Student Affairs, a group of student leaders representing diverse student organizations who discuss campus topics, identify initiatives and form broad-based partnerships seeking to benefit the campus community, published an editorial in The Crimson White on April 16 regarding the use of Yik Yak on the UA campus.

Adam Sterritt, assistant vice president for Student Affairs, said the SLC has had meetings discussing ways to combat the negative effects of Yik Yak at the University and in other institutions.

“Our campus student leaders were especially concerned about the anonymity involved, which gives users a perceived lack of accountability and can lead to instances of cruelty and bullying amongst our students,” Sterritt said. “Bullying of any type, including cyberbullying, is a violation of our Student Code of Conduct. All members of a community must be involved in creating the culture. In addition to efforts by administration, students must hold each other accountable as peers and ensure that we are all working towards creating a positive learning environment.”

Brian Kraus, a senior majoring in physics and president of The Mallet Assembly, helped draft the SLC’s editorial. He said, aside from anonymity, a problem with Yik Yak arises when bystanders who haven’t downloaded the app are brought into play.

“It’s not a good picture in the end,” Kraus said. “People just bounce off of each other. One person can say one thing that’s going too far, and someone else sees that and that it got some votes and says something worse.”

For Kraus, the answer to Yik Yak bullying needs to include personal responsibility and action by the University.

“I think it’s a poisonous thing to have around because you can’t get any depth, and since it’s anonymous and no one has any weight behind their actions, anything that people say can’t be given any weight either,” Kraus said. “The University should make people aware that they are accountable for what they post. There’s a lot of legal shadowy areas as far as what’s considered a threat or harassment and what’s considered anonymous posting online that I think people need to be a more educated about in general.”

(See also “Facebook, social media warrant occasional breaks“)