Ah, yes, Yik Yak: the phone app that’s strictly about yaks. Well, if you click the “Other Top Yaks” section in the “More” category, you’ll find tons of yaks. Over the past two months, there has been a considerable rise in the amount of students who create yaks and reply to them. It’s really entertaining, and some of the Yaks are hilarious, but there may be a point where the yaks get taken too seriously and it gets reported to the administration. That’s when Yik Yak isn’t fun.

Yik Yak is a popular social media platform where users post 200-character “yaks.” It’s the anonymous version of Twitter, but it tracks the approximate location of each post. The platform is similar to a local area’s bulletin board, showing the user the most recent yaks, ranging from one second to two days. Much like Snapchat, the yaks will disappear from the location feed after a day or two, but the original poster can still see their yaks in their “My Yaks” section.

However, the location servers are able to track the location of any high school. If a student tries to post yaks during classes, study halls, and/or lunch periods, they’ll see “You appear to be using this too close to a school. Yik Yak is for adults only.” Yik Yak was originally designed to be for college students, but the trend has since trickled down to the high school level.

The major concern about Yik Yak currently is about what some users happen to post about. Some days, most of the yaks are about the football team. Other days, most of the yaks are about teachers. It’s okay to talk about what you want, but you should be aware of what you type. Like the saying goes, “think before you ink;” realize the effect of what your words can have on others, indirectly and directly.

There’s two major points in the “Rules” section of “Rules & Info” that we should all be aware about: 1: You do not bully or specifically target other yakkers. 2: You DO NOT bully or specifically target other yakkers. 4: Don’t clutter people’s feeds with useless or offensive yaks. If you see a useless or offensive yak, make sure to do your part by downvoting or reporting it. Okay, technically that’s three points, but the first and second points are the same thing. Points 1 and 2 are taken very seriously by the moderators. If a post is deemed to be targeting someone to the extreme, it can be “flagged” and taken down in a matter of seconds.

There’s also a few points in the “Information” section of “Rules & Info” that should also be taken into consideration: “Post your jokes, thoughts, observations, questions, etc. Just make sure that you’re posting quality content.” “Yaks should not join a herd until they are mature enough, so no one under college age should be on Yik Yak.”

Even though yaks will make their mark on social media, just be mindful of what you post. You never know if anything you post will be used against you in the future.