Apps that allow students to gossip anonymously create an easy and stress-free way for people to say how they feel. These apps are unfortunately gaining in popularity.

After School is an app connecting students within a high school in a giant chat room. People post anonymous thoughts, comment on posts and send anonymous compliments. By encouraging students to interact with and compliment others, After School may have good intentions. Unfortunately, good intentions are not always good enough to prevent cyberbullying.

Due to advances in social media and technology, cyberbullying has become a problem for students. The ability to post anonymously can encourage cyberbullying and allow people to send rude comments they normally would not say without anonymity.

While exploring After School, there was compliment after compliment. While some students, including myself, may never experience cyberbullying directly, it can negatively affect teen self-esteem.

Although some are apathetic towards bullying through the After School app, some outraged teenagers took action against the hateful content they witnessed. In January of 2015, a senior from Michigan started a petition to remove the app from the Apple Store. The petition successfully reached 100,000 signatures, and the app was no longer available for download.

After seeing an outcry from students, the After School app retooled and relaunched with new safety features. Now, each post is reviewed by a member of the After School Staff before release, ensuring it is appropriate. Additionally, if a post is about self harm, the app immediately asks the user if they would like to chat with someone, providing instant help to possibly unstable or suicidal users.

I appreciate that After School is trying to prevent being used for cyberbullying, but the concept of a gossip app is still not the most progressive idea.

There is an appeal in the After School app. Although we try not to care about gossip, sometimes we still question what our peers think of us, and it is difficult to ignore an app that might hold all the answers.

Ultimately, however, what truly makes us truly happy can never be found in an app. Having supportive friends, trying our best to achieve our academic goals and doing what we love will always be more consequential than tuning into gossip among our classmates.