Yik Yak chat app stirring up trouble in high schools

 From Chicago, to Georgia, to Southern California, a new social media application is causing problems on middle school and high school campuses across the United States.

It's called Yik Yak, a location-based app that creates an anonymous social chat room where up to 500 nearby users connect through GPS tracking on their phones. Less than 4 months old, Yik Yak has "a couple hundred thousand users, mainly in Southeast/East coast campuses," its co-founder Brooks Buffington said.

Users are limited to 200 characters, and no pictures are allowed. If a post is "down voted" enough times by other users on the forum, the comment disappears. Tech experts are comparing the new Atlanta-based app to a cross between SnapChat and Twitter.

"The app was made for college-age users or above, for college campuses and to act as a virtual bulletin board, so it acts as local Twitter for their campus," Buffington told CNN.

Although the app is meant for users age 17 and older, younger users can still sign up, and that's where the issues have sprouted.

School administrators in Chicago said teens in some of their schools have used the free app for cyberbullying. Others have made anonymous bomb threats that have led to school lockdowns.

"Students were actually coming downstairs to talk to administration, and they were mentioning remarks posted and student names that were obvious, so of course that is going to impact you," Melvin Soto, assistant vice principal at Whitney Young High School, told CNN affiliate WLS.

Some students have compared it to a virtual bathroom wall where users post vitriol and hate.