official definition

kik messenger is a free instant messaging app released by a student-founded canadian company in 2010. kik was different due to its anonymity and in that sense, accessibility. to create a kik account, you did not need a valid phone number, just an email and a birthdate to show that you were over 13. it was a very open application—any user could start a group chat with anyone, all you needed was their username. there is no end-to-end encryption, meaning anyone can intercept messages.

u got kik?

for a 12-year-old girl with a 4th generation ipod touch and no prospects of a phone in the near future, kik was incredibly useful. i could easily message my friends without feeling stupid about using a fake texting app (text now). kik was only for messaging. similar to imessage, kik would tell you when a message was opened and read and would tell you when the other person was typing. (i had to converse with my eighth grade crush on kik since he had a samsung) due to its widespread availability, this lead to the popular phrase “u got kik?” being used as a pick up line. ugh.

in review

fortunately, the most sketchy encounter i had on kik was talking to the 10 year old from orange county that hacked into my friend and i’s semi-successful dance moms instagram fan account. i heard of many experiences with “internet boyfriends” who lived in different countries, and old men trying to talk to young children. there would be chats from strangers, but i didn’t open mine because my dad (thankfully) scared me with lectures about internet security.
‍
this was not the case for a lot of other young users on the app. since you could start a conversation with anyone, sex offenders and pedophiles abused the platform. after i stopped using the app, many news articles were released about bots that spammed users with explicit photos. in march 2016, a registered sex offender was caught with more than 200 kik groups that distributed child pornography. then, in september 2016, CBS news cited kik as a tool in the murder of a 13-year-old girl. kik took very little responsibility in their public statements, only adding photo detection tools to their software after the publicity.

the internet is scary

with this news, it is honestly hard to look back on kik with fondness, knowing how scary of a platform it was. it reminds me that with how much fun and freedom the internet can bring, it also opens doors for the dark and evil in the world. while i can make friends with strangers over my interests, so can others.