Gas App Dangers

The Gas app is a popular social media platform app used by teens across the country that lately has gotten lots of criticism for its safety. 

Some Northwest students aren’t familiar with the app. “I’ve never heard of the app and never owned it before,” stated junior Avery Lewis. 

The Gas app allows users to anonymously answer questions about fellow students in their school district. The ideal focus is to gas up (compliment) the user’s friends in a positive manner. It takes anonymous answers and directly sends them to people the questions are about. Some examples of questions would be “life feels off when you don’t talk to blank” or “who has the best style.”    

Criticism about the safety of the app began in early October when Oktaha Public School in Oklahoma made a Facebook post that read, “Children are being kidnapped in other towns and this new app (Gas) is thought to be the source of predators finding their location.” From that post, rumors spread rapidly and many of the users reacted by deleting the app from their devices. “I deleted the app because everyone’s Snapchat stories were saying it was leading to [kidnapping,]” stated sophomore Sierra Pradhan. 

The claims about the app impacted Gas’s business with a sudden loss of active users. The creator of the Gas app made a statement saying in one day, three percent of the users deleted their accounts. “If people are getting kidnapped I’m sure the people using the app are now deleting it,” stated sophomore John Mulder. 

The Gas app co-founder Nikita Bier initially brushed off the rumors about the app but once they started receiving thousands of negative comments and complaint mail about the sex trafficking claims it was time to take action. The team started responding to messages on the App Store and sent out a notification to all users claiming the app is safe. This did help quiet some of the negative press but many were still concerned about the safety of the app.

People began to speak out on other social media platforms to support Gas and dispel rumors that were still spreading. Eliza Bleu, a human trafficking survivor attempted to help Gas by responding to a Twitter Post disputing claims. Ashton Kutcher, an actor also made a post that read, “Gas app is not involved in trafficking humans.” 

With the Gas app criticism growing quieter lately, can this be another situation where this generation starts to believe everything on the internet without finding the real truth?