Gossip--easy, fun, but...
For children 8-12: Why gossip is a problem, and what to do about it
What do you talk about with friends? Chances are, other kids who aren’t around, like Amy who’s a slob or Huang who talks with an accent. Sometimes you share good information: Aaron’s uncle is flying him to New York to watch the Yankees. This is gossip. It’s easy and fun. But is it good?
Sometimes talking about another kid’s problems makes you feel like your own problems aren’t so bad. And gossiping connects you with your friends.
But gossip—about both good and bad things—can hurt. Gossip doesn’t just hurt the person you are gossiping about. It hurts you too, it hurts the larger group, and it can even cause bad things to happen in the future.
Hurting Others
Most times, the things you talk about are things other kids can’t help. Kids can’t buy their own clothes. They didn’t choose to have an accent. They even behave the way they learn at home. Making fun of things someone cannot change is stupid and mean.
Gossip turns the victim into a thing. After gossip, you see the things you whispered about: the ugly clothes, the accent, or the rich uncle. You do not see the whole person.
Once you see someone as a thing, it’s hard to treat them right. This isolates the person you gossip about—it keeps them from being part of groups. It makes them feel they’re bad. But remember: the things that you gossip about are almost always things kids cannot control.
Gossip is talking, but it can easily become bullying—hurting with actions.
Sharing good information can cause envy—wanting what someone else has. Envious people feel like they’re victims because someone has more than they do. A victim often blames someone or even a whole group.
Hurting Yourself
Gossip hurts whether you say it, hear it, or are the person gossiped about.
When you say or listen to bad things about another person, you strengthen the “hurting” muscle in your heart and brain. Gossip may turn you into a mean, judgmental person who thinks she’s better than other people. Gossip can even turn you into a bully.
It’s easier to be a warm-hearted person who knows how to be a good friend and a good citizen if you don’t fill your mind with bad thoughts about others.
When you don’t like the gossip but listen to it anyway, you teach yourself to be silent in the face of evil. Recently a man who was stabbed said people walked right past him while he was being stabbed. No one stopped to help him.[i] Being silent around evil is also evil.
When you gossip, you shut yourself off from learning about the person you gossiped about. You trained your brain to think badly about the person, so now your brain doesn’t want to listen to them or their good ideas.
If you try to be friends with someone you gossiped about, you will look stupid to your gossipy friends.
You’ll never learn that someone could be your new best friend if you gave him or her a chance.
When you envy someone, you forget the good things you have and focus on what you don’t have.
Hurting the Future
Usually the kids who are gossiped about already have problems. Gossip makes everything worse for them. By the time they are in middle school or high school they might try drugs or alcohol. Some feel so lonesome and out of place that they do terrible things to themselves or others.
Kids who feel bad about themselves cannot easily succeed. This means they’ll never do the good things they were created to do.
When you gossip, you don’t talk about other things. Sharing other kinds of information stretches your brain and heart. Chances of you doing good things in the future are smaller if you waste time gossiping.
What Else to Talk About?
Here are some ideas of other things to talk about:
Video games, movies, or books you like or don’t like, and why
Places you’d like to go on vacation
Places you’ve been on vacation
The most amazing thing you ever saw
The scariest thing that ever happened to you
The most beautiful thing in nature that you’ve seen
Whether you like dogs or cats better—or prefer rabbits, and why
What you would do if you had a million dollars
Why Talking About Ideas Is Good
When you share ideas, your brain stretches.
Your friends will have ideas that are different from yours. You might like those ideas or want to learn more about them.
You’ll learn that their families do things differently from yours. This makes it easier to get along with different people.
Hearing their ideas will help you see the world in different ways. When you think about what they say and do, and don’t just copy it, this is called having an open mind.
When you can see the world the way others see it, you become less judgmental. Rather than quickly judging an idea good or bad, you learn to think about the different ways to think about things.
It’s easier to make new friends because you will be able to talk about all kinds of things that a gossipy person doesn’t think about.
In Conclusion
It’s not easy to change the way you talk with your friends. But my students who learned to talk about other things told me they were happier and had better friendships than when they just gossiped. Good things will happen to you, too, when you stop talking about other people.
For Parents, Teachers, and Others
Biblical and Historical Writings
Both the Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible have many examples of gossip.[ii] Proverbs 16:28 says: “A perverse person stirs up conflict, and a gossip separates close friends.” Judaism considers gossip such an important topic that it has several words to describe different forms:
Lashon hara is true information but defames a person. Amy always wears worn-out clothes, Huang can’t say the letter R.
Rechilut is telling A that B said something (true or false) about them: “Mary is saying that you are getting a divorce.” “George said you are the worst coach in the PeeWee League.”
Motzei shem rah is spreading lies about another person.
Modern Research
As with several other topics with long histories,[iii] modern professors of psychology and sociology have recently “discovered” that, contrary to the wisdom of the ages, gossip is a positive force in society. It helps people learn who’s a good guy and who isn’t, and it binds people together in cohesive societies. Are thousands of years of wisdom saying that gossip is evil wrong? Do these judgments need to be overturned by people whose field is replete with “resarchers” whose work is destabilizing Western society?
One article I saw says gossip “induces individuals to behave more cooperatively toward gossipers in order to improve their reputations. As a result, gossip has an evolutionary advantage that leads to its proliferation.”[iv] It might lead to gossip’s proliferation, but are the gossipers the best people to follow? Or are they prone to be small-minded, power-hungry manipulators with their own personal agendas? Is that “cooperative” behavior done out of a spirit of goodwill, or out of fear?
When I stopped the girls in my sewing classes from gossiping, they universally asked, “If we don’t talk about others, what will we talk about?” When people have small lives—do not read, do not think about large ideas—what else, indeed, is there to talk about? But encouraging kids to talk about ideas with their friends increases their interest in learning about ideas through school, books, and other media.
I believe that one reason Jewish people tend to be successful in adult life is that our culture discourages gossip and encourages thought about ideas, even among young children. It is one of our cultural norms that can be adopted by anyone wishing to improve his or her own life and any parent who is looking to raise children to be confident, successful adults.
[i]Vago, S., et. al., NYC fire inspector stabbed on subway: Nobody stopped to help me. NYpost.com, October 28, 2022. https://nypost.com/2022/10/28/nyc-worker-stabbed-on-subway-nobody-stopped-to-help-me/., accessed May 15, 2024.
[ii] BibleStudyTools Staff, Bible Verses About Gossip, BibleStudyTools.com, July 28, 2021, https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/bible-verses-about-gossip/, accessed May 16, 2024. This site offers a long list of verses on the subject.
[iii] Examples of other beliefs that recent “scientific research” have tried to overturn are that marriage should be between a man and a woman and the belief that there are only two sexes, male and female, and they are immutable.
[iv] Xinyue, P., et al, Explaining the evolution of gossip, Abstract, PNAS 2024, Vol. 121 #9, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2214160121, 1 of 9, accessed May 16, 2024.
Beautifully presented and well thought out. I enjoyed reading it!
Excellent! Sometimes we need a nudge to recalculate how and why we do things. Plus- this article is good for the adult reader, as well!