“I’ll be in the library today if anyone wants to hit on me.”
“College is a game show called Am I Not Hungover or Just Still Drunk?”
“these tours really making me feel like a zoo animal today.”
These are just a few of the most popular “yaks” one finds on their Yik Yak feed upon opening the app on a Sunday morning. Yik Yak has grown in popularity among college students, Skidmore being no exception. Yik Yak launched in 2013 only to close in 2017, then relaunched in 2021. Its appeal to Skidmore and similar liberal arts institutions is that it enables anyone to post anonymous 200 character “yaks” viewable within a five-mile radius. With 87% of students living on campus, the app has arguably become a part of campus culture, bringing together students who don’t even know each other.
Students utilize the app for a variety of reasons: to find out what's happening on or off campus, to air out their grievances with administration, or even to use it as an online diary. With the added anonymity, people can post unfiltered yaks with the comfort of knowing that no one will be able to identify the poster. This, of course, comes with its drawbacks; the initial reason for the app's 2017 ban was due to cyberbullying and hate speech. People felt empowered to “name-drop” professors or fellow students without consequences. Additionally, students could violate academic integrity, or harass one another. This issue has become less prevalent since the relaunch, but still occurs.
With Yik Yak's relaunch, there are optimistic sentiments regarding its potential for good within the campus community. Furthermore, for investigative purposes, the app’s new privacy policy allows posts to be traced to the cellphone number used to create the account, hopefully holding those who take advantage of the app’s obscurity accountable.
Contrastingly, students have come to appreciate the app for its ability to cultivate a community. Who needs Google Maps when I can just ask people on Yik Yak where the best thrift shops are in the area? (The answer is Treasures Boutique and Noah’s Attic, apparently). Students can exchange complaints about workload, dining hall food, lack of sleep, etc. More than this, people can discuss insecurities unfiltered. The anonymity that comes with Yik Yak makes students entitled to be more authentic with their thoughts and feelings compared to other social media apps. This sense of authenticity and relatability can empower students to increase self-esteem and establish a more open community in the real world, something other apps such as BeReal or Snapchat aspire to emulate.
Yik Yak enables us to not only connect with Skidmore, but the students who attend it. As the new academic semester ramps up, and Skidmore students become more and more consumed in their studies, by simply opening Yik Yak, students can engage with hundreds of others in our community through just one post.