CATERING TO Korea’s persistent education fervor, several prominent media outlets today feature articles on the country’s top universities. These articles often contain testimonies from students, which frequently come in the form of screenshots from a community known as Everytime. Ever since its inception in 2011, Everytime has firmly established itself as the number one social media platform for university-related matters—proving to be immensely popular due to its array of useful features such as timetables, GPA calculators, and course reviews. Yet, such unfettered growth has been accompanied by a series of concerning ethical issues, with cases of discrimination and cyberbullying persistently plaguing the community. In order to construct a well-rounded analysis of Everytime, The Yonsei Annals investigated the platform’s functions, benefits, drawbacks, and controversies through a host of comprehensive interviews. 

An introduction to Everytime

   Everytime was established in 2011 by a team of developers led by Kim Han-ee, a graduate of Yonsei University’s Department of Computer Science. They initially set out to create a timetable service to aid in university course planning, which then rapidly expanded into a community encompassing everything from chatrooms to course reviews[1]. Everytime serves to facilitate communication between students—allowing them to discuss a variety of topics under anonymous usernames. These discussions occur in forums divided into several categories: a “free forum” for any topic, forums for certain demographics such as freshmen and graduate students, an employment forum for job searching, and a forum for school news. There is even a forum dedicated to selling and trading items like textbooks and laptops, so that students may obtain school supplies at low prices. Widespread usage under one community is not only a source of convenience, but also serves to encourage lively discourse between students. 

   In addition to the discussion forums, Everytime offers a plethora of services that aid in students’ academic life. One notable feature is the course timetable, which users may configure according to the classes’ day and time. Mapping out a timetable is not only useful during semesters but also before course registration, as students may easily visualize potential schedules and preview course material. Another useful feature is the GPA calculator, which accurately computes a user’s average semester and cumulative grades—taking into account the number of credits per course. Everytime’s course reviews also come in handy when evaluating which classes to take. Star ratings on a scale of one to five give a general indication of class satisfaction, while written reviews provide specific insights into the course’s workload, projects, exams, and grading criteria. 

Pros and cons of Everytime

   Since Everytime is an integral tool for university life, the Annals reached out to several users from Yonsei University to gauge students' opinions on the platform. 

   Choi Ye-won (Jr., School of Business) finds Everytime’s diverse forums to be useful sources of information on academic matters. When beginning preparations for the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam, she was not only able to obtain a multitude of fruitful tips from fellow students on the employment forum, but also managed to secure secondhand textbooks at an affordable price. She experienced similar benefits through the exchange student forum, which she praised as an excellent, comprehensive information hub for study abroad programs. Despite the aforementioned upsides, Choi believes that Everytime is far from perfect, failing to provide a safe and equitable environment for its users. She notes that aggressive and disrespectful language is a common occurrence, particularly in posts concerning sensitive topics such as politics and gender issues. The prevalence of such hate speech is to the extent that Choi actively avoids browsing Everytime, as she feels uncomfortable discussing anything unrelated to academics.

   Park Hee-kyun (Soph., UIC, Quantitative Risk Management.) finds the ability to create a timetable and check it at a glance to be immensely helpful, particularly when keeping track of school events that he would have otherwise forgotten due to his hectic schedule. Also of great assistance to him is Everytime’s potent search function, which enables him to promptly look up necessary information using keywords. However, Park shares Choi’s opinion regarding the rampant toxicity on Everytime’s forums. He laments the forum-wide discrimination targeting people of certain genders and majors, behavior that he believes could escalate uncontrollably into massive disputes. Park attributes this issue primarily to Everytime’s anonymity, which compels people to make vitriolic statements with little consideration towards others’ feelings in a vicious cycle of hatred and discrimination. 

Controversies surrounding Everytime

   Hate speech and discrimination on Everytime is a platform-wide issue—affecting institutions far beyond Yonsei. Several student council candidates at Korea University received strong support on Everytime for their proposal to stop the integration of Korea’s Seoul and Sejong campuses[2], while one student at an undisclosed women’s university was driven to suicide over malicious Everytime comments[3]. 

   In an interview with the Annals, Professor Lee Ji-eun (Prof., Dept. of Anthropology) pointed out Everytime’s anonymity as a major cause of such hate speech, since it compels users to state whatever they want without the risk of any spiteful comments being attributed to them. Moreover, Everytime is also a closed community that requires verification in order to join; this enclosed nature is another factor exacerbating hate speech, as users feel secure with the fact that whatever they write will not spread beyond a small, confined forum. Lee adds that Everytime’s insularity could foster elitism and discrimination toward students of other schools—a phenomenon that is particularly widespread in prestigious universities like the so-called SKY[4] schools. This is because Everytime users lack the ability to communicate and share opinions with students from other universities—often leading to misconceptions, a lack of understanding, and even hostilities toward groups they do not belong to. 

   On a more positive note, Lee claims that the impact of Everytime’s issues may be slightly overstated. Opinions on Everytime are heavily influenced by the few users who are consistently active on the forums, with those active users likely being in the minority. Thus, the perceived hate speech on Everytime may not be indicative of the opinions of all students. Regardless, Lee does warn against the consequences of mainstream media’s usage of toxic opinions on Everytime; such hate speech could be blown out of proportion and used erroneously to represent the opinions of the majority in a given university. 

   Ultimately, the crux of Everytime’s hate speech issue is that nobody is held responsible for what occurs on the platform; comprehensive community rules are lacking, filtering of offensive language is nonexistent, and the platform’s anonymity makes it immensely difficult to hold perpetrators accountable. In order to rectify this shortcoming, Lee suggests stronger community guidelines like those employed by large platforms such as YouTube and Twitter. Furthermore, she also stresses the stringent monitoring of discussion forums by Everytime staff as another imperative step in counteracting discrimination and hate speech. 

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   Everytime’s utility to university students is unquestionable, through both the wide spectrum of academic information it provides and its assortment of convenient, built-in features. Yet it would be remiss to merely dwell on the platform’s benefits, as issues of foul language and discrimination continue to haunt its users. Only when firm safeguards are put in place, will Everytime be able to nurture a safe, inclusive community for all. 

[1] Weekly Chosun

[2] The  Hankyoreh

[3] Maeil Business

[4] SKY: Acronym for Seoul National, Korea, and Yonsei universities