Chat Rooms & Sharing Circles: How Indian Women Are Claiming Safer Online Spaces

It was a late-night message from a stranger that finally pushed Aadya, from New Delhi, to stop posting in a public women’s Facebook group. “It started with small insults, ‘Why do you dress like that?’, ‘You’re too brash.’ Then the threats followed. After a point, it felt like everything I wrote was being watched, judged, and turned against me,” she recalls. Her experience is far from unusual.

Across India, social media has turned into hostile ground for women, where harassment, doxxing, trolling, and threats are not the exception but part of daily life. In response, many women are silently reshaping the digital map, moving away from noisy, unsafe platforms and carving out women-only or women-centred corners online. 

When Online Harassment Becomes the Norm

The reality becomes clear when you look at the numbers. A survey by Plan International found that more than 58 per cent of young women in India have faced online harassment, ranging from casual insults to rape and death threats, while nearly half reported being threatened with physical or sexual violence.

A 2023 study by LocalCircles found that 83 per cent of urban women users felt more needed to be done to make the internet safer, with many asking for a national hotline to handle cyber grievances. The harassment doesn’t end on social media either.

A Truecaller report found that eight in ten Indian women get nuisance or harassing calls regularly. For a lot of women, the constant interruptions are exhausting, and the easiest response is to pull back, posting less, holding back opinions, or sometimes leaving online spaces entirely.

Finding Safety in Private Corners

Against this backdrop, women-only spaces are becoming digital sanctuaries. Private WhatsApp groups, Telegram circles, niche Discord servers, and even closed Reddit forums are carefully put together to create privacy, trust, and a little breathing room. 

A Bengaluru-based tech worker who moderates a Telegram group explained, “Because we’re all pseudonymous, we can talk more freely. When trolls show up, we block them instantly. We don’t face the kind of public backlash you’d get on Twitter.” 

For many women, these spaces function like living rooms online: women swap advice, vent frustrations, and find solidarity without the constant feeling of being judged.

Some big platforms have started trying out features to give women a bit more control, though they’re still nowhere near women-only spaces.

Bumble, for example, added a feature where women could post a question and wait for matches to respond within a day. It takes some of the pressure off having to start the conversation every time. The app also introduced initials-only profiles and stronger verification tools in India, giving women a bit more control over who can see their information.

Even with these changes, a lot of women say they feel safest in smaller, closed spaces they run themselves. WhatsApp groups, private Discord servers, or feminist collectives become places where trust, not algorithms, decides how things work and who really gets heard.

But much of this movement is happening out of the spotlight. Across India, young women lean on closed WhatsApp circles just to check in on their mental health, post on finstas to show themselves honestly to friends they trust, or join feminist Instagram groups that challenge beauty standards and sexism.

In cities like Delhi and Mumbai, these private online spaces have also become organising hubs, spots where women share legal tips, plan protests, or talk about issues that would probably attract trolling anywhere else. These silent corners of the internet are where women are really taking back control of their digital lives.

These spaces, also come with their own set of challenges. As they grow, keeping the groups well-moderated becomes harder, which raises the risk of infiltration or leaks. Critics also warn about echo chambers, safe but isolated pockets that can make women’s voices harder to hear in the wider online world.

Access isn’t equal either, many women in rural areas or those less familiar with technology might not even know these groups exist. But for those who do find them, these spaces really matter. 

“It’s the only place I can really say what I feel without getting judged,” said a Mumbai student, talking about her private Instagram circle.

Taking Back Control in the Digital World

What women are doing isn’t stepping back; it’s resisting. By making these safer spaces, they’re taking a bit of control in an internet that so often doesn’t give it to them. They’re also nudging platforms and policymakers to actually do something.

Reports like Break the Silo call for a proper, unified policy to deal with online gender-based violence, and surveys show that people really want government-backed hotlines and quicker legal support. While waiting for that to happen, women are still carving out their own little corners online, places that remind us that digital spaces can be both personal and powerful.

Views expressed by the author are their own.