Sit With Us is a free lunch-planning app created in 2016 by Natalie Hampton, then a 16-year-old 11th grader from Sherman Oaks, California. At her previous school she had been shut out by her classmates and ate lunch alone every day. Her app lets students quietly find a table where they are guaranteed a welcome, so nobody has to walk across a crowded cafeteria and risk being turned away.
Here is how the app worked, why the lunch hour matters so much to students who are left out, and what parents and schools can take from Natalie's idea.
The problem Natalie set out to fix
For most adults, lunch is a break. For a student without friends at school, it can be the hardest part of the day. Classes have seating charts and teachers in the room; the cafeteria has neither. Where you sit, and who lets you sit with them, is visible to everyone.
Natalie knew this first-hand. In an interview with NPR's All Things Considered, she described being completely ostracised at her old school, with the result that she ate alone every single day. Earlier reports said the isolation lasted through her middle-school years at an all-girls school; those details came from her family and local press and are best treated as her own account.
She eventually changed schools and made friends at the new one. Instead of putting the experience behind her, she decided she had a responsibility to help students still going through it. As she told the station KTVU, if she did nothing, "then I'm just as bad as the people who watched me eat alone."
How the Sit With Us app works
The design is simple, and the simplicity is the point. A student creates an account, then chooses whether to become an "ambassador". Ambassadors are students willing to host what the app calls open lunches: tables that anyone using the app is welcome to join.
Via iTunes
An ambassador posts an open lunch for a given day. A student who has nowhere to sit can open the app, see which tables are open and simply walk over. Because joining is arranged through the phone, nobody else in the room needs to know that the student was looking for a seat.
That privacy is what Natalie cared about most. Asking a table of strangers if you can join them is a public act, and being refused is a public humiliation. As she put it to NPR, "It's through the phone. No one else has to know." She added that once you reach the table, you know you will not be rejected.
Via iTunes
Via iTunes
Finding a group, starting one and staying in touch
Besides joining open lunches, students could search for existing lunch groups or start their own, and the app included a way to message friends about upcoming lunch plans. The idea was to turn one welcoming meal into a habit: a student who joins a table once has a reason to come back.
Via iTunes
Natalie also set up a Sit With Us club at her school, so ambassadors were not acting alone. At her first club meeting, she said, members were enthusiastic, and students were already posting open lunches within days of launch. Interest spread further than she expected; KTVU reported downloads outside the United States and even a group of nurses at UCLA using it to coordinate their own lunch breaks.
Why social exclusion counts as bullying
When people picture bullying, they often think of hitting or name-calling. Being deliberately left out is quieter, but it is still bullying. The US government's StopBullying.gov lists exclusion from activities, conversations and social media among the recognised forms.
The numbers give a sense of scale. According to the School Crime Supplement for the 2021–22 school year, about 19% of US students aged 12 to 18 reported being bullied, with rates higher in middle school (about 26%) than in high school (about 16%). Among students who were bullied, roughly a quarter said it happened in the cafeteria. Fewer than half told an adult at school.
The same source notes that persistent bullying can deepen isolation, depression and anxiety, and that its effects can last into adulthood, while stressing that most bullied young people do not become suicidal. Even short-term exclusion makes school harder to bear, and lunch is often where it shows most.
What the app gets right, and where it has limits
Sit With Us works with something research on bullying keeps pointing to: bystanders matter. StopBullying.gov notes that peers who step in can make a major difference, and that the most promising prevention involves the whole school community rather than zero-tolerance punishments. An ambassador hosting an open lunch is, in effect, a bystander who has decided in advance to help.
The app also shifts the burden. Usually the lonely student has to take the risk of asking. Here, the welcoming students take the first step by posting a table, and the student looking for company only has to accept.
No app replaces adults paying attention, though. A table at lunch does not stop harassment in hallways or online, and a student who is being targeted needs adults who listen and act. Tools like this work best as one part of a wider school culture where kindness is expected and where exclusion is noticed and addressed.
It is also worth knowing that small apps launched by students do not always stay maintained for long. If you are a parent or teacher interested in the idea, check whether Sit With Us is currently available in your app store, and remember that the principle works perfectly well without any technology at all.
Ideas for students, parents and teachers
- Students: If you have a group, invite someone who usually sits alone. You do not need an app to host an open table; you only need to mean it.
- Parents: Ask specific questions such as "Who did you sit with at lunch today?" A vague "How was school?" rarely brings out exclusion.
- Teachers and staff: Watch the cafeteria and playground, not just the classroom. Some schools run lunch clubs or "buddy bench" schemes that do the same job as open lunches.
- Schools: Give students a real role. Natalie's club worked because peers, not adults, were the ones saying "you can sit with us".
If a young person is struggling with low mood or thoughts of self-harm because of bullying, talk to a doctor or school counsellor; in the US, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text at 988.
A small idea with a long reach
What makes Natalie Hampton's story worth remembering is not the technology. It is that she took a painful experience and asked a practical question: what would have made lunch bearable for me? Her answer was a guaranteed seat, offered without anyone watching. That is something every school, and every student with a few friends and an empty chair, can offer.
For more on the app, see the Sit With Us website or its App Store page. The screenshots above come from the app's App Store listing.
Sources: NPR / WBEZ: Teen Creates App So Bullied Kids Never Have To Eat Alone; KTVU: Teen creates app to make sure kids never have to eat lunch alone; StopBullying.gov: Facts About Bullying; Sit With Us on the App Store; first reported to us via Unisoul Theory.
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