Skype and its Irrelevance to our Generation

Skype. It’s been available to the public since 2003 and allows text, video, and voice chat between two or more users. In AISG, the Skype application is included in FileWave, meaning that all of us can use it. However, it seems that our school is devoid of Skype users. I interviewed many students in the AISG community, and this is what I found out about why Skype is irrelevant and under-used in our generation.

When I spoke to Sanshiro Maekawa, a 9th grader, he stated that he didn’t use Skype because “there are other, better apps, in my opinion.” When asked about what other apps, he said that Discord, an online communication app was “better equipped” and more “user-friendly”. Multiple other students used Discord instead of Skype, like Rahul Samtani. He said that “I use discord over Skype because it’s faster, and runs faster on my computer.” Discord was released back in 2015, but unlike Skype, its developers have been working overtime to release new updates, making the app better and more user-friendly. It was first created for gamers but is now used around the world for normal everyday communication because it is fast and easy to use.

Additionally, many students I interviewed said that Skype had too many phishers and scammers. Nina Y. said that “in middle school, every time I logged into my Skype account, I received scamming messages from random accounts.”  It became very annoying as “[She] kept receiving notifications.” Phishing is also a very big problem in the Skype community. When I had a Skype account, I had to constantly deal with people adding me and trying to get credit card numbers or other private information. When I switched to discord, I dealt with none of these problems.

In the AISG community, Skype has become more and more irrelevant over the years. In middle school, Skype is also degrading in use. Bobo L. “says that I haven’t used skype in 2 years, because now I use WeChat.” In conclusion, Skype has basically become unused in the student body of AISG. This is because of 2 main factors: there are better options for communication such as discord and that there are scammers and phishers on Skype.

Feel free to give any comments or opinions below.