Interestingly, last week I chose to blog about my feelings on technology in the classroom. They are overwhelmingly negative in almost every way. Just yesterday the Yik Yak mobile app exploded at my high school. I would say that 9 out of every 10 students was talking about it by D-Lunch, every teacher was talking about it too. The app is basically an anonymous chat room with everybody within 5 miles of you, everybody who has downloaded the app. It started small, apparently people had been Yacking for a week or so, but just yesterday it caught on and seemingly instantly the app was exploding with posts, hundreds of them coming one after the other. Here is the trouble: most of the posts were horribly inappropriate, or racist, or included unspeakable things about specific people. There is nothing on the app that restricts the use of names. These are actual names, people I know, teachers at my school, and everybody who was Yacking was posting these awful things about them.
I first heard the word Yik Yak in 5th period, and must of heard it a thousand times after that. That really is not an over exaggeration. While many people were cracking up, laughing at the things that people were anonymously posting about other people, I didn't even download the app. I didn't want to support the evil that the app brought, so I chose to not even bother downloading it. Honestly, im not surprised that it happened, but I am disappointed. I know, firsthand, that there are awful people at this school who are irrationally mean hearted, those people are everywhere, but to see it is always shocking. To see my peers using the N-word, calling girls whores, making up nasty lies about teachers, its shocking. At times society feels like its moving forward, learning from its mistakes, but something like this proves the exact opposite. I hope that im not grouped in to some massive generalization about the students at my high school, because I in no way support or supported what happened yesterday.
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