After school app

Another Anonymous App tells all about Har-Ber Students

Senior Sandra Vargas feels the vibration of her phone. She looks down to see the lit screen notifying yet another anonymous boy “picking” her with heart eye emojis listed. The link to the After School app is attached.

The newest teen app panic is just the same as the old teen app panic. Wariness of anonymous posts strikes yet again on After School. Users of the app can post with positive intentions, or, more commonly, hurtful and inappropriate content.

“It’s like Ask.fm. Because it’s anonymous, people are saying really perverted and unnecessary comments that are rude and mean,” Vargas said.

Negative content on After School is common due to users not having to face consequences to what they post because of the anonymous option. Being attached to the user’s specific school, your feed will be full of posts from Har-Ber students about fellow students, complaints about teachers, and opinions on school activities. The biggest issue Vargas found was the negative comments about other students. If the reader finds a post about them, they could become highly offended by the content the anonymous student posted about them.

“I’ve seen negative comments say kind-of nice things about people, like what they want to do to people,” junior Ben Dodson said.

Pornography has been found in the After School app’s reviews. Supposedly, if the user agrees to be 17 years or older, then legally the app’s creators are not responsible for any negative content seen. But parent reviews on the app show that users under 17, who did not agree to being 17, have still seen content. Dodson told of how the app works and said an image must be attached to a post. Being so, a negative complimentary comment towards a crush is often attached to a sexual animation. Many peach, or “butt”, emojis are found on the After School app as well.

“People are able to post how they feel about a certain person, and that person doesn’t have to know who posted it,” junior Litzy Medina said.

Prime reasons why After School was created was for positive content. With the option of being anonymous, the creator’s goal was for high school students to have a safe place to post feelings without being ridiculed. Medina has used the app to see what fellow Har-Ber students have said about her and her friends, and has only noticed anonymous posts of compliments towards crushes. She thinks After School is a positive app for stating your feelings and not having to worry about getting made fun of for it.

Junior Cearra McPhearson had the app, but then deleted it after seeing drama. While having the app, she saw both positive and negative content. Compliments towards crushes were the most common positive posts seen.

“There was a lot of posts saying ‘oh she’s so pretty, I want to be her’. Same with the guys, posts saying ‘they’re cute,’” McPhearson said.

Whether positive or negative content was anonymously posted on After School, the app’s posts have influenced Har-Ber students. It’s being downloaded quickly after the constant anonymous texts, and also quickly being deleted after seeing what the app has to offer.

Interviews:

Sandra Vargas, senior

Ben Dodson, junior

Litzy Medina, junior

Cearra McPhearson, junior

Do you like the after school app

no , because It’s like Ask.fm, because it’s anonymous, people are saying really perverted and unnecessary comments that are rude and mean

Yes, it’s funny

No

I don’t but i do because it’s funny to see what people say

What made you get it

To see what people are saying about me and my friends

I kept getting messages

Kept getting messages

Kept getting messages

positive or negative?

Positive because people are able to post how they feel about a certain person and that person doesn’t have to know who posted it

At first, just good comments. But by the time i deleted it, it was all perverted negative content

Both positive- “There was a lot of posts saying oh she’s so pretty, I want to be her. Same with the guys, posts saying their cute

I’ve seen negative comments say kind-of nice things about people, like what they want to do to people… laughs

Will people abuse the anonymousness?

Yeah because they will think oh no one will know it’s me so i can post whatever i want, no matter how nasty it is

Bad content through emojis-peach emoji- like mean girls burn book- nobody knows who wrote them

Yes

Yes

Have you seen Bullying? Threats? Porn?

No, all i’ve seen is she is so pretty, compliments

I did see bullying, oh this girl is so fat

Not bullying, just inappropriate sayings and pictures

Only seen one comment that was completely mean