Educators

For educators & faculty

A single landing page for teaching, discussion, and due diligence, without treating the site as therapy.

Dear Nobody is an anonymous writing platform: users can write letters, confessions, or narrative explanations, keep them private, or share them to a public feed called the Mailbox. There is no account or signup. From the user’s perspective, it is a place to put words down and choose whether they stay private or appear in the Mailbox, without building a profile or proving who you are. The design problem we solve is expression under privacy, not clinical treatment. This page is written for instructors in psychology, counseling, social work, and adjacent programs who may use the platform as a real-world case study, a discussion artifact, or a reference point, not as a substitute for professional care.

Why it can matter in your curriculum

  • Digital mental health & ethics: How can a product promise anonymity, moderation, and crisis-adjacent content without positioning itself as therapy?
  • Stigma and disclosure: Anonymous disclosure is a different speech act than identified help-seeking; students can compare both.
  • Community risk & safety design: Human moderation, guidelines, and infrastructure choices are visible in our public documents—useful for policy and professional ethics conversations.
  • Narrative and coping: Writing-as-expression (journaling, unsent letters) sits beside clinical intervention in real life; the Mailbox makes that distinction discussable in the open.

What students can do (concrete uses)

We do not require students to submit personal trauma to use Dear Nobody in class. Many assignments work entirely from reading, policy analysis, or hypothetical discussion.

Suggested discussion prompts & classroom use cases

  1. Scope of practice: “Where does anonymous peer expression end and mental health treatment begin? What would make a platform incorrectly claim therapeutic benefit?”
  2. Moderation tradeoffs: “What harms should a moderator prioritize preventing, and what speech might be over-reached? Compare Dear Nobody’s guidelines to a generic social network.”
  3. Privacy engineering: “What does ‘no accounts’ actually change for risk, abuse, and user control? Read the privacy policy and list what is collected vs. explicitly not collected.”
  4. Crisis pathways: “Design a syllabus note that points students to crisis resources without implying the course or the site provides clinical care.”
  5. Research ethics (preview): “If a researcher wanted to use public Mailbox text, what steps does the site describe in Terms / Media policy? What would IRB still need to decide?”

Disclaimer: not therapy; how we handle safety

Dear Nobody is not therapy, counseling, or a crisis service. We do not diagnose, treat, or provide clinical advice. If someone may be in danger, our Crisis Help page points to professional and emergency resources.

Content may be moderated under our Community Guidelines. We cannot guarantee that every risk is caught before it is seen. Faculty should set classroom expectations accordingly (content warnings, opt-out readings, alternative assignments).

Verify what we claim

Contact

For syllabus questions, classroom use, or faculty outreach: educators@dearnobody.org (use a clear subject line; we aim to reply within a few business days). For permission to republish Mailbox content off-site or press licensing, use media@dearnobody.org per Media & collaboration. General questions: Contact.