Trying to Find Fun at Columbia? Don’t Look at Sidechat
The app’s anonymity is a double-edged sword.
If you have nothing nice to say, say it on Sidechat.
Since its launch in 2022, the app has quickly earned a reputation as the soapbox for campus life—a space where college students can anonymously vent, share memes, and unleash intrusive thoughts. Promising humor and relatability, the platform has spread across universities nationwide to become both a source of camaraderie and controversy.
With its 2023 acquisition of Yik Yak, Sidechat marketed itself as a safer alternative to its predecessor, which was notorious for hate speech, cyberbullying, and accusations of antisemitism. The app promotes an anonymous space for unfiltered expression:
“All posts, comments, and messages are anonymous, so feel free to be your most authentic,” Sidechat’s App Store page says.
At its best, Sidechat delivers on this promise. Students can voice frustrations they might suppress elsewhere, or share confessions that range from the deeply personal to the delightfully absurd. These include everything from academic stress to social struggles, even musings on dining hall food. In 2023, the Columbia student news site Bwog called Sidechat a platform “anyone on pretty much any college campus knows and loves.”
While the app’s anonymity fosters honesty, it can also invite vitriol, misinformation, and extremism. As one friend put it, Sidechat can expose emotions bubbling beneath the surface, bringing about “some of the worst parts about the general campus culture," as divisive issues “become explosive on Sidechat.”
The pitfalls of platforms like Yik Yak persist on Sidechat even though it is a supposedly safer iteration of it. Sidechat claims that its content moderation efforts operate “24/7,” but harmful posts often slip through. Problematic material can often spread widely before it is addressed.
In February 2024, a legal complaint filed on behalf of Jewish students at Columbia detailed how Sidechat was used to target a student who removed an anti-Israel political flier from her dorm hallway. Users doxxed her, sharing her dorm location on the app and encouraging others to vandalize her space. Such incidents underscore anonymity’s dangerous side—it emboldens users to act without accountability, amplifying emotions and, in some cases, enabling harassment.
The stakes escalated in April 2024 when then-University President Minouche Shafik testified before Congress and described Sidechat as “poisonous,” citing “egregious cases” of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism on the platform. Similar criticisms have sparked debate at Harvard, UCLA, and UNC, where students have decried Sidechat’s impact on mental health and campus culture.
“There are both pros and cons to anonymity. If it’s anonymous, you can sort of share these mental health experiences or concerns anonymously and have this…layer of armor against stigma,” Dr. Melissa DuPont-Reyes, who researches social media and adolescent mental health at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, told Sundial. “But then the downside is, what if this content isn’t supportive? What if it is stigmatizing content or discriminatory or hate speech?”
When I first downloaded Sidechat as a new student this year, I hoped it would provide a snapshot of my new community. Instead, I discovered a feed dominated by grievances—posts about crushing loneliness, relentless academic pressure, and the supposedly impenetrable cliques of Columbia’s social scene. While Sidechat isn’t necessarily designed to market college as “fun” in the traditional sense, it’s hard to imagine that its purpose is to amplify cynicism to this degree either.
The app has also given rise to a confessional culture—students voice their fears, frustrations, and sharpest criticisms—but only from behind the protective screens of anonymity.
At a university as intellectually vibrant as Columbia, it is unsettling that this rawness is not more visible in person. Experiences filtered through anonymity often lose their authenticity, offering only a distorted, exaggerated glimpse of campus life. As a result, Sidechat presents a fractured, chaotic, and distorted version of Columbia. The app mirrors—but also warps—the student experience, reducing a vibrant community to a battleground of complaints and hostility.
While Sidechat may mirror elements of the Columbia experience, it does so in a way that is counterproductive to many students’ mental health. Without the empathy and nuance of face-to-face interactions, Sidechat posts lack the potential for understanding that in-person conversations can provide.
My experiences on campus have certainly been vastly more positive than Sidechat would suggest. The real Columbia—full of connection, curiosity, and joy—exists beyond any screen. Offline, there is joy to be found in early morning breakfasts at Ferris (mind you, before the lines get impossibly long), strolls through Riverside Park, studying in Butler’s little-known reading rooms, and soaking up Avery Library’s “dark academia vibes.”
To foster genuine community and mental well-being, the digital spaces we use should strive to enhance connection, not amplify hostility. As students and administrators alike grapple with Sidechat’s impacts, we all must ask ourselves: what kind of campus do we want to create, both online and offline?
Ms. Moses is a first year in the Jewish Theological Seminary Joint Program studying history and Hebrew Bible. She is a staff writer for Sundial.