From an anonymous app, a forum for abuse develops
Millions of teenagers in high schools nationwide are using a smartphone app to anonymously share their deepest anxieties, secret crushes, vulgar assessments of their classmates and even violent threats, all without adults being able to look in.
The After School app has exploded in popularity this school year and is now on more than 22,300 high school campuses, according to its creators. Because it is designed to be accessible only to teenagers, many parents and administrators have not known anything about it.
Envisioned as a safe space for high schoolers to discuss sensitive issues without having to reveal their names, After School has in some cases become a vehicle for bullying, crude observations and alleged criminal activity, all under a cloak of secrecy. Similar to Yik Yak - an open app that has become popular on college campuses - After School allows teens to post comments and images on message boards associated with individual high school campuses but carries nothing identifying the students who post there.
“At first it was people saying nice things and complimenting others, and then it turned into bullying,” said Mya Bianchi, a 15-year-old who attends Ionia High School in central Michigan. Mya said a user posted her phone number along with instructions to contact her for photos, a message that was punctuated by a winking smiley face and icons of a camera and a bikini. After receiving harassing messages, she had to change her number.
Her mother, Carrie Bunting, said Mya was “freaked out” to be getting messages from unknown numbers. It also irked Bunting.
“They’re underage children,” Bunting said. “I don’t feel like there should be something that excludes parents.”
Cyberbullying has been around nearly as long as the Internet, and teens have taken conflicts and taunts to social media on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as via text messages. The real-life people behind those digital missives are usually known; on After School, users are anonymous, and some say that has enabled and even encouraged cruelty and threatening behavior.
After School limits its audience to teens by requiring users to verify that they attend high school through their Facebook pages and by creating restricted message boards for each high school campus. Parents and others who want to access the app would have to lie to do so, saying on Facebook that they attend the high school. Even then, parents could be stopped by an algorithm that aims to block people from posing as high school students.
A place for free expression
The app’s creators declined to say exactly how many students use After School, but they indicated that there are somewhere between 2 million and 10 million users. There are approximately 55 million K-12 students in U.S. public and private schools nationwide, with about 15 million in public school grades 9 through 12, according to the Education Department.
The app is extremely popular at high school campuses across the Washington area; at the private Sidwell Friends School in the District of Columbia, which President Obama’s children attend, 119 students were signed up as of Friday. Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Va., had 700 students who use the app; at Walter Johnson High in Bethesda, Maryland, 245 students are on it.
Cory Levy, 24, one of the app’s founders, said After School gives teens a chance to “express themselves without worrying about any backlash or any repercussions.” He said the app is a new way for teens to ask difficult, uncomfortable questions anonymously and to more directly address issues such as depression, how to come out as gay to one’s parents or how to navigate the daily challenges of teen life.