This teenager ate lunch alone every day, so she’s making sure no one else has to
In the comedy “Mean Girls,” an often-quoted part of the film is one high school girl shouting at another, “You can’t sit with us!”
It was funny in the movie, but not in real life. Kids feel the sentiment, whether spoken aloud or not, that they are not welcome to sit with certain people every day. And when no one will sit with them during school lunches, it can feel like a spotlight of shame.
Natalie Hampton, a 16-year-old in California, felt that shame her entire year of seventh grade, and she wants to make sure no one else has to feel it. So she created a smartphone app called “Sit With Us” that allows people to join others for lunch without the fear of rejection.
“I was completely ostracized by all of my classmates, and so I had to eat lunch alone every day. When you walk into the lunchroom and you see all the tables of everyone sitting there and you know that going up to them would only end in rejection, you feel extremely alone and extremely isolated, and your stomach drops,” Hampton told NPR. “And you are searching for a place to eat, but you know that if you sit by yourself, there’ll be so much embarrassment that comes with it because people will know and they'll see you as the girl who has nowhere to sit. So there’s so many awful feelings that come along with it.”
“Sit With Us,” which was launched on Friday, allows students to sign up and be ambassadors, who indicate when and where they’re eating lunch and welcome anyone to come join them. Then other students looking for people to eat lunch with can use the app to find ambassadors and a place to sit without fear of being turned away, and hopefully make new friends.
“This way it’s very private. It’s through the phone. No one else has to know,” Hampton explained. “And you know that you’re not going to be rejected once you get to the table.”
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about 22 percent of female high school students and 18 percent of male high school students reported being bullied on school property in the past year in 2011.
Hampton is now a junior in high school and says she is doing well socially and that people have already started posting open lunches at her school. She didn’t want to contribute to others feeling bullied the way she had in middle school by staying silent.
“I felt that if I was thriving in a new school but didn’t do anything about the people who feel like this every single day, then I’m just as bad as the people who watched me eat alone,” Hampton said. “I felt like, with my story, it was my job to stand up and do something about all the kids who feel like this every day. And I wanted to create something that would address bullying, but in a positive way.”
This story was originally published September 13, 2016 at 9:33 AM with the headline "This teenager ate lunch alone every day, so she’s making sure no one else has to."