YikYak is like an unofficial newsfeed from a college, targeting just that campus. It is definitely not the view you get at Parents and Family Weekend.
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/spying-on-college-life-via-yik-yak/
(I know there was a thread about Yik Yak a few months ago but I’m not sure about reviving old threads.)
Why are some parents so obsessed with needing to know what’s going on at all times with their adult children or their children’s environment?
Sorry, things like this really creep me out. The parent really needs to get a hobby that focuses on herself, not her child.
Oh good, I"m glad she’s stopped cyberstalking her daughter. 8-|
Just yuk. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do less.
I remember years ago when sleep away summer camps began putting up cameras so you could see what was going on at camp 24/7. I was really glad my son’s camp didn’t go that route. It was bad enough I felt I had to look at all the pictures posted every day the first few years he was a camper because I felt guilty if I didn’t.
UW-Madison doesn’t need Yik Yak, it has the Badger Herald Shoutouts!
Agree with romani. Parents need to learn to let go.
I really don’t want to know what is really going on at that micro-level. If I want to know, I ask and even then the kids are pretty straight shooters and sometimes I hear things I wish I hadn’t heard 
I vastly prefer my “imaginary” world of their campuses.
As a student who probably Yaks more than he should, I see zero value in parents monitoring this app. Yak is largely filled with junky posts about Netflix marathons, bad cafeteria pizza, reposted jokes, etc. Most of this has no value even for students on campus, and unless parents really care about how good the tacos at a nearby restaurant are, those posts are 100% irrelevant.
Also as a student I would like to add that there is simply so much you don’t want to see. I know for a fact that if my future kid had this type of app I’d wonder if it was them typing. I don’t think parents need to stress themselves out especially since yik yak, at least at my school gets explicit. And one day, many moons away I wouldn’t want to know what’s going on
As far as parents are concerned, yik yak is not for the faint of heart. There was a thread a few months back and I was curious and took a look. @Jazzli is correct, it is very explicit and just not really something that parents are going to want to see. I can tell you that I saw nothing about “Netflix marathons, bad cafeterias pizza or reposted jokes……” as noted by another poster. It was more of an unfiltered commentary on the social activity of that particular campus. No parent would find it comforting.
Best to give them their own space for this sort of thing.
I think it must differ by campus, time/day, etc. I tend to see more Netflix, food, and jokes than I do explicit stuff. Again, nothing that would be relevant to a parent when there’s thousands of people to a feed and only a few actually “yakking”.
I’ve never looked at the Yik Yak for either my UG or grad school… but I can promise that my experience was (and is) nothing like whatever is posted on there.
After reading the article, I once again thanked my parents for not having their lives revolve around me. What a boring way to live, IMO- to have no identity outside of your child.
Couldn’t agree more Romanig. We spent twenty one years raising 3 kids and launching them to college…time to get back to the two of us. After-all, if there wasn’t the two of us there wouldn’t be the “five of us.”
I know it was banned at my daughter’s school and that before it was, there were problems.
I’ve never looked at Yik Yak and probably never will. That said, what’s the big deal if parents want to check it out simply out of curiosity? I think that helicoptering involves stalking your own kid, not random anonymous posters at any campus you may care to sample. I’m really not interested in the inane, vulgar posts of college age students directed at each other but any parent who does want to read it and gets upset about it was asking for it, IMO.
However, I don’t see what’s creepy about interest in the type of environment the child you love and brought up for 18 years, now lives in. OTOH, when I was in college and grad school I would have thought it was really weird to spend time conversing online with people my parents age about issues concerning higher education and life in general (if online had existed then). I got plenty of that in my own family, lol.
So why doesn’t that door swing both ways, @romanigypsyeyes?
Joblue, that’s not the same thing. I don’t spy on my parents.
I have my reasons. I’ve never connected well with people my age because of life events, I had to grow up fast.
If parents want to hang out with people their kids’ age, be my guest. I often hang out with people my parents’ age that I’ve known for a long time.
What I don’t do is put a tracker app on my parents’ phone or stalk wherever my parents are hanging out.
But unless I’ve misunderstood, Yik Yak doesn’t allow anyone to “spy” on their own kid. I agree that a tracker app on a college kid’s phone is stalker-ish but reading a news feed from your child’s university (particularly when you are writing checks for thousands of dollars to that institution) seems innocuous enough.
I’ve no problem with younger people reading and posting on the Parents Forum. Why can’t parents read Yik Yak without being condemned? I think there’s sufficient justification for it even though it doesn’t interest me.
I’ll admit to checking out Yik Yak. All because I read about it on cc I found plenty of Netflix and food comments along with the more vulgar. Comparing comments between schools was sort of interesting, and were what I would have expected between engineering vs party school, etc.
Interesting but no thanks. Anonymous social network on a college campus - what could go wrong?
Wasn’t there something like this a few years ago, called “campus juice” or something similar? That was a really gross web site, it was campus specific, and users were absolutely horrible. A friend of mine has a daughter who was the subject of a whole thread calling her names, discussing her facial features, etc. Anonymous posters showing their absolute worst side.
Is this site similar to that?
Just dropped S1 off at his apartment and saw more than I wanted. Our Sunday night phone calls are plenty, and 50-somethings snooping on the 18-22 crowd is just creepy.