“Catching people doing embarrassing things has been going on for some time, and this is the more recent iteration of that,” says Catherine Bradshaw, a professor and senior associate dean for research at the University of Virginia.
School cafeterias are a common place for bullying to occur, she says, because the student-to-staff ratio is much higher than in a classroom. Bradshaw, who studies children’s mental health and bullying prevention, has been collecting data on 25,000 students. When asked where at school they’ve been bullied in the past month, 14% of elementary students and 18% of both middle- and high-school students reported it happening in the cafeteria.
Eating in a classroom
Recent graduate Nihar Patel hadn’t eaten lunch in the cafeteria at his Fairfield, Ohio, school since his freshman year because of lunch-shaming. He says he personally was never a target, though. One of his good friends was biting into a turkey sandwich when she noticed a flash: A group of other girls had taken her photo and posted it to the school’s Class of 2026 Snapchat page.
“She stopped eating at school,” 18-year-old Patel says, explaining that his friend didn’t want to talk about it but gave him permission to. “I know she’s always had body issues.”