Is it Okay for My Kid to Gossip with Her Friends Online?

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Reena Ninan:

Episode 198. Is It Okay For My Kid To Gossip With Her Friends Online? 

So we’re going to talk about gossiping today, and I feel like it’s a lifelong learning process of what happens when you move your mouth too much.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Exactly. And it’s such a human thing to do, right? To want to gossip a bit. And you’re right, adults do it. Kids do it. Teenagers definitely do it.

Reena Ninan:

And so I want to break into the psychology of all that. Why we do, why it makes us feel so good. Let me read you this letter first, Lisa. 

Hi Lisa. I have a question for the podcast. My 13-year-old daughter is very social and enjoys talking and texting with friends as most kids do. She has good relationships from what I see and hear. She knows I check her phone and I don’t have major concerns except I do worry about gossiping via tech, email, texts. Of course, I do not approve of gossiping. However, I surmise this is a normal part of teen behavior. It scares me though because I know I wasn’t perfect and also gossiped at this age, but I wasn’t leaving behind a digital footprint that could get me in trouble. Kids today can get in a lot of trouble with screenshots. Is this something to advise her about or just to let it go? I worry she may lose friends if her gossipy chats are shared with the wrong people. Thank you. 

Okay. The digital trail that this mom talks about, until I read this letter, I did not think about the digital trail that normal gossip doesn’t really entail.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Not face-to-face gossip or not hop on the phone and have a conversation, gossip, but texting, putting it into a chat somewhere that may feel private. It’s there, it’s a record. You can’t take it back. It’s like toothpaste out of the tube.

Reena Ninan:

In your experience, Lisa, do you think gossiping in teens like this is a big deal? Have you seen the other side of this?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

It’s something that everybody does or at least feels really tempted to do at times. And I think for teens where I have an extra measure of understanding about the wish to gossip, the impulse to gossip is that teens have to spend all day every day with a bunch of kids they would not have chosen otherwise. If you think about she’s 13, right? Everybody is full blast with their emotions and the ways in which they’re annoying and the ways in which they grade on each other. 

In a given classroom. So 13 is often eighth grade. There’s a bunch of kids that you love, hopefully at least a couple. A bunch of kids that you don’t really have feelings about one way or another and invariably at least a couple if not a bunch of kids who completely rub you the wrong way.

And so part of how kids try to metabolize that and hopefully not act out on it in person and say something mean to the kid in person is the same way adults do, right? Is I think sometimes when we’re gossiping we’re like, oh my gosh, you just have to hear what this person did or what I heard about this person. I have to discharge it in what feels like a safe space so that I don’t do something more inappropriate with it. So I’m not saying it’s all okay. I am saying I think there can be an effort towards an adaptive way to manage all of the annoyance and frustration and also information that kids have.

Reena Ninan:

So gossiping. Why do we do it? 

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Why do we do it? I don’t know. Reena, what do you think? I’m going to think on this, but what do you think? What’s your take? 

Reena Ninan:

I think it makes us feel better even if we don’t have to have a low self-esteem. But I think talking about people like, oh my God, can you believe what? So-and-so did with their kid, and I think this is my non-scientific because I don’t have proof and you tell me this is right. I just feel like it does something in the brain that makes us feel like we’re better than someone else without making us say that we’re better than someone else.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I love that explanation. Well I’m not a hundred percent sure we have a science, but what I can tell you as a psychologist is that is a very viable hypothesis. And the way I would walk up to this from a scientific lens is this sense of status, this sense of having information, being something that confers status. I know something that you don’t know and I get to tell you this thing.

So we can easily make the argument that we know from a neurological and evolutionary standpoint, people care a lot about status. It’s linked to survival. If you think down to our evolutionary roots and then we know that having things that are valuable increases one’s status, a juicy bit of news that is valuable. 

So I gave the explanation that gossip is sometimes a way for kids to just vent their annoyance about peers. You’re bringing in another explanation. Think these can live very happily side by side. There’s lots of reasons people gossip, which is status. I got info I want to share. Often gossip to think through your status argument and the ways in which it can help people feel big without showing off too much themselves. Often gossip hurts people, so you’ve got a double benefit there. If we think about benefit, it is a very loosely defined term here of both having the status of a piece of information and that raises your status, but also it’s a piece of information that may lower somebody else’s status.

So I think that maybe we have a new theory of gossip, Reena right here on our podcast. I like this. It may not be that new. New to me. 

Reena Ninan:

Some people will be like, I’ve been doing this for a while. 

You’ve mentioned this before about sometimes kids come home and they just want to dump on you. They just want you to collect all that garbage. Is it ever okay for gossip to be okay?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Well, I actually think you may have shared one good example of when it is when you are burning with something and you want to share it or really frustrated with the kid in your class and you want to share it. I think if home is a vault, a place where kids can come and be like, you’re not going to believe what I heard. You’re not going to believe what this kid did. And the parents can collect what I call that emotional garbage of the day, take it in and the parent just seals it off, gets rid of it, does not spread it around, does not talk to other people, doesn’t make too big a deal of it. I think that’s actually, if we want to call that gossip, we can. I would just say that’s just helping kids unload the heavy weight of the day to a safe place.

Reena Ninan:

I want to bring it back to this letter though, because the mom’s concern that really stood out to me that I was like, oh my gosh, I’d never thought of that, is the digital footprint that her daughter’s leaving behind because they’re not texting face to face. I mean they’re not talking gossiping face to face. They’re texting and gossiping, which anybody in that chat could screenshot and then send anywhere.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

A hundred percent. So this is a great conversation to have with our kids and I think it’s a more successful conversation if we come at it from the standpoint of I understand and I really don’t have much of an issue with your need to sometimes talk about people. I want to think with you about where you talk about people. I think a lot of adults have thought through carefully their own systems and strategies for talking about people when they feel they need to. Reena, if I have something spicy, I need to say I will do it over the phone.

Reena Ninan:

But I feel like we’re a different generation. We wouldn’t be texting. I think we’re more aware. What’s the line that you have about emails?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Well, it’s not my line, but I don’t know who came up with it, but I think it’s fantastic, which is dance like nobody’s watching email like you will be subpoenaed. 

Reena Ninan:

I love that. I love that one. I think that’s a great place to start. 

Dr. Lisa Damour:

But speaking of subpoenas, there’s now plenty of evidence to be found in any media outlet where texts do end up in court where gossipy mean stuff that people thought was entirely just between us and casual does end up in court. Just this year there were people fired at a university because of somebody taking photos of texts they were sending. So it wasn’t even that the texts themselves in their original form were shared. It was a photo taken of somebody’s texting. So putting something in writing is, for lack of a better word, a dangerous thing to do if it’s not something you want everyone to know you said.

Reena Ninan:

Lisa, I want to go back to this concept of trying to get rein on your kids and get them to understand the consequences. I think sometimes parents might feel, yes, my child understands and has stopped gossiping or this behavior, but what do you do if your child is part of a chat or a text message and that shows up? What do you do then?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

That’s a tricky one, right? So let’s say you can make the case to your kid, text like you’re going to be subpoenaed and the kid’s like, fine, I got it, I hear you. I will do that. But then you’re aware or the kid makes it clear that they’re part of a group text group chat, which these are enormous. These get very out of control often in the middle school and it’s not at all unusual that they’re receiving texts from other kids that are saying mean things about classmates or trying to stir stuff up. And it may even be asking for your kid to weigh in. It may even be asking, don’t you think that kid’s such a Turkey, right? They’re not going to use that language, but that kind of language. So your kid may be trying to put the brakes on it, but then they’re going to get invited into stuff or they’re going to be passive observers of stuff.

Reena Ninan:

And then I worry that someone realizes you’re on the text and you didn’t tell me about this. Just so many other things that can blow up from this.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Exactly. Or you didn’t say something to defend me, right? Kids will, I mean, kids are great, but I’ve heard of kids sometimes doing kind of crummy stuff and they will do things like, don’t you think so-and-so’s horrible? And then they will see that you either agree or fail to defend them, and then they’ll turn around and show it to that kid, see who doesn’t defend you. I mean, this parent is not at all overblowing the reality of the ways in which this could spin quickly out of control. So if the kid is like, I’m not doing it, but people are sending me stuff, they’re asking me questions. I think there’s a couple of options we could offer to that child. So the first one is we can say, do you want to tell them that I have told you you can’t be in this group chat anymore because sometimes kids become part of something they just don’t want to be part of.

Reena Ninan:

But can you imagine we talk about social capital this fall and yes, I want my child, I can explain to my child, but getting them then to stand up, I don’t think I would have the courage as an adult to be like, remove me from this chat. So what are the realistic solutions in that when you don’t want your child to be caught in this sort of whirlwind with everyone else when they’ve done nothing wrong?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Well, so one is if they can blame it on you. So guys, my mom, my dad saw my chat, they’re kicking me off of this group chat. I’ll see you at school. So that’s one option. Just if the kid’s like I want no part of it. I think there’s also ways for kids to make it clear that they never saw the text. I mean, these group chats generate so many texts that I know that kids that just stop opening them and so then they can sort of claim innocence. But again, now you’re into some pretty murky stuff. I think that then does have another option of under certain circumstances, kids may say, guys, that’s mean. Please, you got to stop. You’re giving them some language where they can go on record of having said, guys, that’s mean you got to stop.

Reena Ninan:

Whoa, okay. Giving them some kind of language. I still think of myself in high school. I don’t know that I would’ve had the courage to say, Hey guys, that’s really mean we got to stop when I wasn’t the one with all the social capital.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I think you’re right. So I think that we may be down to the other two options, which is the parent can say, do you want me to be the bad guy who says you can’t be part of this? Or do you want to make it clear that you’ve stopped looking at this chat altogether? Kids will do that. I think that the other option, maybe that’s one step short of like, Hey guys, this is mean you got to stop, is you could say to your kid, put something in there guys. My folks check my texts stop. So then it’s again, the kid’s not seeming like a goodie two shoes, but they are saying, stop this, this  is not okay. 

Reena Ninan:

Ooh, that will get everyone to shut down too.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yeah, or they may kick you off the group chat, which you might be perfectly happy with.

Reena Ninan:

Exactly what you want, but do you find the kids will do that and their teen just say, Hey, my parents check this phone.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

I think you want to give kids tons of options and I think you want to have a conversation about which options they may say, yeah, that’s never going to work. But I think it’s the back and forth and coming up with something that is potentially viable for the kid as a solution.

Reena Ninan:

How do you think adults should respond when their teens come to them about their peers and want to gossip about something? It could also be an important moment for you to get intel. 

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Well, this is, okay, this is really interesting, which is when kids do bring home stuff like, oh my God, you’re not going to believe what I heard. I have very clear memories of my older daughter when she was in the eighth grade coming home and being like, oh my gosh, these kids had weed gummies. And so she’s gossiping, she’s sharing information, and this is such a phenomenally interesting moment I think between parent and child where a kid brings home a big charged piece of information about peers. And I think there’s real value in trying to handle it well and make the most of it right? I think that we can think about gossip. It’s like a present that our kid gives to us when they’re talking about peers may not feel like a present to have your kid talk about weed gummies in the eighth grade, but it is. The ideal answer in that moment, Reena, I think, is to say, oh, what do you think about that while you get your bearings help where your kid is with it? And they might be like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe it. Right? In which case you’re having that conversation. Or they might be like, I don’t know, it seems like fine. In which case you’re having another conversation. I would say it can be tempting to flip out to be like, “what?!”

That’s going to make a kid sorry that they brought it up and kids only bring up stuff that they’re concerned about. That’s in my experience, if a kid’s talking about something, they’ve got their questions. So I would try to not overreact and I would try to not underreact and be like, oh, okay, that’s cool, whatever. Because kids will be like, I’m bringing it up because concerned and you’re not concerned. So in that way, when kids bring us gossip, it’s valuable.

Reena Ninan:

When you look at this letter, I can’t help but think when do you decide when, okay, this is a big issue, I need to shut this down now and where it could potentially lead. What are your red flags on gossip?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Well, I actually think we should be really clear with kids. Do not use digital environments to do or say anything you would not want to be with you forever and totally public, right? Public and permanent. Public and permanent. This is something we really want to hammer on with kids, and I really, really think texting is such a good place to start with getting clarity on that. And for me, texting is like JV social media. If you can handle texting well, you use it appropriately. You have fun with it, it’s a good time. You don’t say mean things, you don’t participate in meanness. Then when the time comes where the kid’s like everybody’s on social media, I need social media to know what’s happening. You can feel a lot more confident about that option if your kid is involved with the meanest text thread stuff ever. Do not give that kid social media. That is not a good idea. 

I will tell you kids’ judgment about what’s mean is not always so good. And so I love that this parent is looking at the texts and I love that this parent is well, recognizing that this is typical has questions about whether it’s appropriate online. And Reena, the thing that has clarified for me so much how kids are not always clear about what is or is not mean on a text is I have had young clients around this age who get into some beef with another kid while texting and feel that they’ve been treated very badly by text and come into their clinical sessions and show me the thread of what was said on the text thread. And they want me to look at the other person’s super mean things that were said, but I’m reading the whole thread and the kid I’m sitting with was at least as mean as the kid that they’re upset about. 

Reena Ninan:

Unaware. Not self-aware.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

No, not self-aware at all. So I’m like, okay, but wait a minute, but this is what you said, right? And they’re like, yeah, but look what they said. And so I think there’s tremendous value in what’s happening in the home of this person who wrote the letter, which is the kid is trying things out on texting. The parent is looking at the texting, the parent’s going to give the kid feedback saying, you know what? Don’t put this kind of stuff in a digital environment if you need to dump it here or call your friend or do it where no one can hear you. And then if the kid’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, I don’t get it. You can be like, and your access to social media hinges on you getting this sorted out.

Reena Ninan:

How do we get kids to be more self-aware about what is mean and what is gossipy?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

It’s hard. It’s really hard because first of all, norms, we talk about norms all the time. If everyone around you is doing it, it doesn’t seem like that big a deal. So that is problematic. The other thing is that I think a lot of parents when they supervise or scroll through their kids’ texts, it’s like the weirdest collection of stuff. A lot of it weird memes that are completely over adult’s heads, to be honest. And then stuff that to adults would look like. It’s kind of mean, but to the kids truly is felt by everyone involved to be funny and playful. And so I think it can be very hard as an adult looking at these things to always have a really clear view of when your kid has crossed a line. But again, it’s a conversation, right? It’s a conversation. You may not know, but you do need to say, this feels mean. Talk to me about this.

Reena Ninan:

This is the thing about parenting that no one has ever told me and I have experienced only through this podcast, is you’ve got to have lots of conversations all the time with your child.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yeah, yeah. No, that’s our number one asset is our ongoing open channel of communication. So the trick really, Reena is not, what’s the thing you say to fix the behavior? There’s no one thing you can say that’s going to fix a behavior. And what works with a 13-year-old isn’t going to work with a 15-year-old. I mean that this is all so fluid. I think the real trick is how do you approach the conversation in a way that you don’t end it before it’s even started? How do you approach the conversation in a way that keeps the channels of communication open? So when the conversation takes some curve ball, your kid wants to come back to you and say, okay, now what am I supposed to do?

Reena Ninan:

So you’ve opened that line of communications.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

And then try to keep it open, right? This is going to be a moving target. It’s going to change all the time.

Reena Ninan:

So for final strategies, we’re wrapping up here, Lisa, when you’re talking to your kids about gossip and you’re going to get the eye roll and you’re like, just don’t do it, right? It’s like, please, mom, you don’t understand. How do we break through that to get through to kids, to get them to understand how this could be so destructive and damaging?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Well, I think this is the beautiful thing. We all use our phones for all sorts of things now. So rather than being like, don’t do this. I’m telling you not to do this. I think it can help to start by saying, here’s my personal policy for what I will text and what I will call about. Here’s why I have that policy, and I’m going to require that you adopt that policy to show me you understand it and have good judgment on texting. Because until you show me good judgment on texting, and I consider this good judgment, this is my definition, you’re not going to get more access to digital technology. So the kid can be annoyed with you about that, but it’s a perfectly reasonable case to make. And I have a very high tolerance for eye-rolling. One of my favorite educators, I absolutely love this woman who cares for teenagers. She’s in a high school. Her motto is complain, but comply. 

Reena Ninan:

Complain, but comply.

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Yeah. She’s like, you can complain about what I’m asking you to do. Move your backpack, close your locker. As long as you do it, I’m good with it. So I think let ’em roll their eyes as long as they do what you’re asking. That’s really where the rubber hits the road.

Reena Ninan:

So Lisa, what do you have for us for Parenting To Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Reena, I think so much of the guidance I give comes from my clinical experience, and the goal of being a clinician is to say things that will change behavior. This is really hard to do, and the way that we tend to make it even harder on ourselves is we say something that makes a person feel defensive. As soon as the defenses are up, nothing else is going in. So in this theme that we keep coming back to conversation, conversation, connection, connection. My generic guidance is if you know what’s going to make your kid defensive, do not start there. It will not keep the lines of communication open. Find a creative solution, find another way in. Do not inspire their defenses.

Reena Ninan:

Don’t inspire their defenses. Great advice, Lisa. I want to thank you so much.

And we want to wish everyone happy holidays and a happy new Year. We know we’re in the thick of the holiday season right now, and Lisa and I will be back in New Year’s with a special episode. 

Dr. Lisa Damour:

Alright, Rena, I wish you all the best as the year comes to its end. 

Reena Ninan:

Can’t wait to kick it back up with you in January. 

Dr. Lisa Damour:

See you next year. 

Reena Ninan: 

See you next year.