Yik Yak And Social Capital Of Individuals On College Campuses

Social media is defined as websites and applications used for social networking, in other words it is a way for people to interact and express themselves without being face to face. Social media has become a large part of the life of teenagers, who make up most of the population of people who are subjected to using social media in their daily lives. Many college students are faced with balancing their social lives with school and even athletics making priorities a big dilemma for them. College students in America are affected in many ways by social media whether it be their social life, their happiness, or their grades.

A social media app by the name of “Yik Yak” has been creating conflict among several colleges across the United States. Yik Yak is anonymous, meaning that the user can view and post messages to anyone within a one and a half mile radius without giving a username, photo, password, etc. Despite several situations, Yik Yak is mainly harmless, however, recent occurrences have proved otherwise. Racist and sexist posts, as well as some threatening comments have caused students to feel awkward, hurt, and even threatened. The question is, should colleges ban Yik Yak?

In the article “Anonymous social media- Understanding the content and context of Yik Yak” the authors : Erik W. Black, Kelsey Mezzina, and Lindsay A. Thompson argue that even though Yik Yak, an anonymous social medial aimed for college students does present potential abuse, it does not demonstrate serious threat to students. The study was conducted for three days across 42 different college campuses.The author proclaims that the college campuses that were used in the research to study the content of yik yak posts are located in the Eastern and Southern parts of U.S. To support their claim, the authors incorporate numerical data from their study. The purpose of this research was obtain a better understanding of what type of content students

To summarise, the concept of social capital has been analysed by many. There are different views, the definition has evolved through years, and has many interpretations, then again, did not get away from a critique as well. We can look at the idea from personal level as well as community, group level. We can surely say, that through the use of social capital people learn how to utilise their skills

Social Capital is defined as the networks of relationships among people, enabling that society to function effectively. James Coleman’s “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital” examines the many benefits of social capital in a society. However, most forms of social capital are public goods and do not primarily profit the person who has to bring it about. Therefore, it’s not in his interest to bring it leading to a shortage. Coleman wants to apply economics’s principle of rational action to the social perspective to increase people’s willingness to socialize. On the other hand, Alejandro Portes’s “The Two Meanings of Social Capital” challenges Coleman’s concept by arguing that people shouldn’t

Billy was an all-American student at Centerville High School who had all A’s for his whole 4 years there. Billy had many schools looking at him because he had been the starting running back for varsity since his freshman year. One night Billy went out with a few friends to celebrate at a house party. Billy had got sort of tipsy and had posted a video of him chugging a jug of beer then passing out 5 min later. The week after all the schools that he had wanted to go to stopped talking to him right after the incident was seen by all the schools. Social media can negatively impact college admissions; however, it can also help students market themselves and choose the appropriate college.

Good self esteem derives from being accepted by people whose relationship one values and from

Research Question: “Why are people, particularly college and high school students, so attracted to the idea of constructing an anonymous identity through online social media platforms, like Yik Yak?”

Since the early days of the widespread use of internet forums, the disguise of the wily screen has been the norm. It could be argued it was not until Facebook required users real name that this trend began to change. Mark Zuckerberg, founder, and CEO of Facebook favors the end of anonymity on the web to thwart trolling and harassment across social media and the internet. (Daily Mail Reporter, 2011) However, anonymity still flourishes on the web with apps like Yik Yak. In essence, Yik Yak is a social media app for iOS and Android that targets college campuses with their 10-mile radius limit as the “go to” source for current happenings and gossip, all under the veil of anonymity. (Tech Crunch, n.d.) While Yik Yak most recently has been striving to be known more by its local aspect over the anonymity, it affords “keyboard warriors,” controversy still clouds the app and the adverse effect on young student’s college life. (Constine,

Are we becoming less human with the passing of each day? Have we become too dependent on technology, specifically social media? In this day and age, people have different views on social media. They question its true purpose and its effect on society as a whole. With that said, although there are many thoughts concerning the topic/trend of social media something that is undoubtedly true is that social media plays an active role in the lives of the majority of people. Whether in a positive or negative way, social media influences the lives of all people. However this paper focuses on the effect of social media on college students. It addresses both the positive and negative effects of social media on those in college; focusing on a student’s academic efficiency, social interactive skills, and overall productivity.

“As the use of social media increases and becomes an integral part of nearly every student’s life, problems arise when student expression on these sites turns into threats against the school or other students, implicating both student safety and the speaker’s right to free speech” (Hughes 208). There’s no denying that social media has become a part of most people’s daily life. We have sites like Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. These websites, or apps, allow us to express ourselves in any way possible, whether it’s supporting families who lost a member in a mass shooting, trying to impeach the latest president, or donating to those who are victims of natural disasters. It’s not always that social

Nevertheless, the Internet opens new ways to investigate in social and behavioural sciences because there are many scientific questions about some target population that do not look for generalised results but representative ones. As many scholars recognise, the Internet provides new opportunities for non-random survey data (Couper, 2000; Fricker and Schonlau, 2002). In particular, these authors distinguish the advantages of the Internet to capture the “hard to reach”/“hard to involve” population. In fact, this paper proposes to analyze if social networking sites (SNSs), specifically the Facebook network site, can help researchers to contact hidden or hard to reach persons. Although in the last decade researchers became interested in the study of SNSs, they particularly focus on the characteristics of the users of SNSs (Back et al., 2010), on the analysis of the social capital and their influence in users behaviour (Ellison et al., 2007; Bigge, 2006) or on ethical issues concerning with the reward of private information on the Internet (Acquisti and Gross, 2006; Boyd and Ellison, 2008; Boyd, 2008; Boyd and Hargittai, 2010). But until now it has not been common to exploit SNSs as a research tool (Brickman-Bhutta, 2009). Boyd and Ellison (2008, p. 1) define SNSs as “web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public

Social networks have evolved from AOL, Myspace, Facebook, and now we have an array of anonymous social networks emerging. I use social media regularly and I notice how anonymous social networks like Yik Yak and Secret are popular on the College of Charleston Campus. Established in 2012, Whisper allows users to send and receive messages anonymously. In addition, Whisper has general posts that are creatively embedded on a picture. Secret differs from most anonymous sites like, Yik Yak and Whisper, because it uses your phone’s contact list to find friends so users only interact with people the know. These social networks are often scrutinized for spreading rumors and promoting cyber bullying. However, if placed in the right hands and the appropriate environment anonymous social media can be beneficial to its users. My goal in this paper is to ease the stigma surrounding apps like Whisper, Secret, and Yik Yak and explore the most productive use for such apps by evaluating research and stories that cover con and pros of anonymous social media.

The human psyche is diverse in nature. Social psychologists view the three parts that make up the social self as the individual self, relational self, and collective self (Gilovich et al., 2013). These categories make up the framework of how humans see themselves as individuals, how they are in relationships, and how they fit into society. Several important factors in the social self are self-esteem and self-worth. The effects of self-verification and self-enhancement on positive self-esteem and negative vs. positive self-worth can be further analyzed by Swann, Pelham, and Krull in their 1989 study.

Htet Htet Oo, a fourth year mechanical engineering student at Cal Poly, has firsthand experience with the effects of social networking sites on her sense of community and self-esteem. The social networking site that affected her the most was Facebook (Oo). After reading through her feed, Htet Htet would feel her life was boring in comparison to her friends who posted about what exciting activity they did that day. Htet Htet commented that she felt “unproductive, depressed, and lazy” after using social media (Oo). Similar to Johanna’s opinion that excessive time spent on social media is a waste (J. Murphy). Eventually she became fully aware of what Facebook was doing to her self-esteem and wellbeing and she decided to delete her account. While she intended to use Facebook as a way to keep in touch with friends, it ultimately damaged her (Oo).