The boundaries of an App

Internet and mobile telephony do not have borders. How many times have we heard this phrase! And it would be true if it were not for some exceptions in the form of censorship government (see Turkey, Korea…) or, attention, protection of minors. Indeed, to the physical borders we can already begin to understand that virtual borders accompany them. That is what has happened to one of the most famous Apps in the United States and whose misuse has led to an important debate.

The App in question is called Yik Yak and it happens to be a new emulation of the most famous Secret. That is, it is a messaging app that offers total anonymity for the sender. In this case, Yik Yak works based on the geolocation and only allows you to send and read messages when you are in a specific location with a completely limited radius of action.

There would be nothing strange about using this app if, once again, users limited themselves to using it properly. However, it has been detected that in primary schools Its use went beyond communication to become a perfect focus of bullying or cyberbullying under the cover of anonymity.

“We were naive. We created the app primarily for college students. Using the app the way we intended it to be used requires a certain maturity and responsibility,” said one of its creators in an interview published in the American edition of the Huffington Post. And it is often proven that maturity and mobile telephony do not exactly go hand in hand.

The fact is that to avoid this misuse of Yik Yak, the solution has been chosen: put borders on it. That is, limiting its use within school premises in what is called “geographical blocking”. Since the application requires the phone to say what its position is in order to work, the creators have used this information to prevent its use in educational centers for minors. Several schools have already contacted the developer company to include them in the list of areas where the App can be disabled and even An agreement has been signed with the company Maponics, which has the locations of 100,599 schools across the United States (851% of the total, according to Yik Yak officials).

On the other hand, the use of this App has also been limited to those over 17 years of age in order to reach a more mature audience that is aware of the dangers and risks of using any mobile application.

Without a doubt, however, what this app opens up again is the debate on minors' access to mobile phones, the uses and restrictions of an app and, of course, the behavior of minors at school and their relationship with each other. Three fronts to analyze with many problems to solve and that may be key in the immediate future.