What Parents Should Know About the Shut-Down Anonymous Poll App

Note: tbh shut down in July 2018. Facebook, which bought the app in October 2017, announced on July 2, 2018 that it was closing tbh because of low usage. Apps like this can come back under a new name, and the founder behind tbh later built a very similar app, so we keep this guide up to help parents know what tbh was and what to watch for now.

tbh was an anonymous polling app for high school students. The name stood for "to be honest." Students answered multiple-choice questions about their classmates, and the classmates they picked received the results as anonymous compliments. The app launched in August 2017, spread fast, and was shut down by Facebook in July 2018. It is no longer available.

Parent & educator training video

This video is from when tbh was available. It shows how the app worked before it shut down in 2018.

What was the tbh app?

• tbh was a social app where users anonymously answered polls about their classmates
• Questions were multiple choice, and the answer choices were the names of the student's friends and classmates
• The app asked for access to the phone's contacts and used the phone's location to list nearby schools. Students then picked the school they attended
• The questions were written by the developers to keep things positive, like "Best to bring to a party?"
• Students could suggest new polls, but those had to be approved first
• When someone picked you, you earned a "gem." Gems were color coded, pink if a girl picked you and blue if a boy picked you
• You saw the grade and gender of the person who picked you, but never their name

How big did tbh get?

• tbh launched in a few states in August 2017 and spent weeks at the top of the free app charts
• In October 2017, after about nine weeks, it had 5 million downloads and 2.5 million daily active users, according to TechCrunch's report on the Facebook deal
• Facebook bought tbh that same month and said it would keep running as its own app
• Less than a year later, Facebook shut it down for low usage

Why did parents need to care about tbh?

• Students could not use tbh unless they let it access their contacts and location
• There was no real check on who people were. Anyone could sign up and say they went to a local school, even an adult
• Even with approved, positive questions, polls about classmates could still leave some students out or make them a target
• Being picked, or never being picked, could feel like a popularity scoreboard, and the gem system was built on peer judgment
• Anonymous feedback can hit hard for students who are looking for approval from their peers

The same idea came back as Gas

tbh's co-creator, Nikita Bier, later built Gas, an anonymous compliment poll app for high schoolers that worked much like tbh. Discord bought Gas in January 2023 and shut it down in November 2023. If your student mentions an app where classmates vote on each other anonymously, it is likely the same pattern. Read our Gas app guide for parents to see how it played out the second time.

tbh in the news

[tbh's] 'gamified' structure still feeds the distraction and sense of disconnection that are causing epidemic levels of depression and isolation among today's smartphone-addicted teens. -Fortune, 2017

What parents can do about anonymous poll apps now

• Ask your student if anyone at school uses an app where classmates vote on each other. Keep it curious, not accusing
• Talk about how anonymous polls can affect friendships, even when the questions sound nice
• Be careful with any app that asks for full access to contacts and location before it will work
• Help your child find positive ways to connect with friends online, and be on the apps they use
• Ask about their day, both at school and online, and keep the conversation open
• Let your student know they can always come to you if something online hurts, and they will not be in trouble for telling you

Similar apps parents should know about now

• Learn how today's anonymous apps work in our guide to anonymous social media apps
• Gas, tbh's successor, covered in our Gas app guide
• Many of these apps get shared through Snapchat. See our Snapchat guide for parents

Conclusion

tbh tried to make anonymous apps kind, and for a while teens loved it. But polls about classmates, even friendly ones, still invited comparison and left room for hurt feelings. tbh is gone, and so is Gas, but the idea keeps coming back. If your student finds the next app like it, talk it through together and help them focus on the connections that build them up.