From complaints about classes to exchanges about eating clubs, the TigerConfessions Facebook page has allowed Princeton students to anonymously share their thoughts since 2018. Anonymous confession pages are not unique to Princeton — there’s also, for example, CUNY Confessions on Facebook and Yale Confessions on Instagram.

Current and former Princeton students are allowed to join the group and submit confessions through a Google Form. From there, the group moderator, an anonymous Princeton student who uses the pseudonym Tyga San, individually approves and posts submissions to the private Facebook group. Once posted, anyone in the group can publicly react to or comment on the confession.

All posts are accepted except “low-effort, boring, or incomprehensible content,” as well as “low-effort or inflammatory political content” without a name signed to it, personal attacks, suicidal thoughts, duplicate posts, and advertisements.

At its peak, TigerConfessions was the locus of campus conversation. In May 2020, 6 percent of all posts on TigerConfessions contained “MAT202” or “MAT 202,” and nearly 8 percent of all posts on Tiger Confessions contained “202.” (Some students referred to the class as “202” by itself, although a few posts containing “202” were used to refer to other courses).

Yet usage of the COVID-era tool has declined substantially.

Submissions hit an all-time high during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring of 2020, with an average of about 113 posts a day. Since then, posting has noticeably declined, decreasing to an average of about 6 posts a day in Fall 2022 — a period when other anonymous confession apps, such as Fizz, have increased in popularity.

Facebook usage among Princeton students has also declined overall — the Official Princeton Class of 2023 page has 2100 members, while the Class of 2026 page has 1200 members. According to the Daily Princetonian’s inaugural Frosh Survey, 43 percent of the incoming Class of 2024 used Facebook on a regular basis, compared to only 17.3 percent of the incoming Class of 2026. At the same time, TigerConfessions has fallen into disuse.

Using a post submission dataset provided by the moderator, we looked at how the Facebook group has reflected campus conversations over the past three years. The dataset contains the text of confessions that were submitted and approved from October 2019 to mid-January 2023.

Explore our findings on social life, mental health, COVID-19, academics, and campus life or search for specific terms below.