The boundaries of an App

Internet and mobile telephony do not borders . How many times have we heard this phrase! And it would be true if it weren’t for some exceptions in the form of government censorship (see Turkey, Korea …) or, attention, protection of minors. Indeed, we can already begin to understand that physical borders are accompanied by virtual borders. 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 to say, it is a messaging App that offers the total anonymity of the issuer. In this case, Yik Yak works based on geolocation and only allows you to send messages and read them when you are in a certain place with a totally delimited radius of action. The use of this App would not have anything strange if, once again, the users were limited to use 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 application mainly for university students. Using the application in 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 Huffington Post . And it is that too many times it is verified that maturity and mobile telephony do not exactly go hand in hand. The fact is that to avoid this misuse of Yik Yak, we have opted for the solution of putting borders on it . In other words, limiting that it can be used within school grounds in what is called “geo-blocking”. Since the application requires the phone to say its position in order to function, the creators have used this information to prevent its use in educational centers for minors. Several schools have already contacted the developer to include them in the list of areas where to disable the App and even an agreement has been signed with the company Maponics , which owns the locations of 100,599 schools throughout the United States (85% of the total, according to those responsible for Yik Yak). On the other hand, the use of this App has also been limited to those over 17 years of age in order to reach an audience that is in principle more mature and aware of the dangers and risks in the use of any mobile application. Undoubtedly, but what this App opens again is the debate on the access of minors to mobile telephony, the uses and restrictions of an App and, of course, the behavior of minors at school and the relationship of with each other. Three fronts to analyze with many problems to solve and that may be key in the immediate future.