It starts as a whisper to a friend or a message to the groupchat, a “Did you hear about…?” passed between classes. People say it is just harmless or funny, until one day the name being passed around isn’t someone else’s, it’s yours. And suddenly, the “joke” isn’t funny, the whispers aren’t so quiet anymore and the damage suddenly just got real. Speaking of getting real here, we’ve all listened to the gossip or maybe even we’ve added to it. So, before we’re so quick to dismiss it as harmless, it’s worth asking what good we really get for spreading drama and to actually think about what it could do to the people who are the subjects of that drama. High school is a thing we all have to experience, so why try to make it miserable and create drama for no reason because we’re bored?
Those who seek attention are usually the ones who tend to come up with the rumors. Sadly, in high school the latest hot gossip never fails to spark conversations. With how many of us in school are on the socials, information spreads quicker than ever, which means screenshots and an easy way to talk bad about people. But, oftentimes, when we are in the middle of spilling the tea, we do not think about how it could negatively affect the people we are talking about. In a time period where it is normalized to always have drama at high schools, we desperately need to get a better hold on it and work towards a call to action.
March is self harm awareness month. That being said, we need to understand one of the biggest things that can impact students’ mental health.
“Being the target of negative school gossip can damage the student’s reputation. It has been shown to associate with greater problems in peer relations, such as alienation, exclusion, and rejection. Negative school gossip has even been shown to increase suicidal thoughts. As a typical mental health problem in the digital age, mobile phone addiction may also be affected by negative school gossip,” said the National Library of Medicine website.
One of the most important aspects of gossip is not being a part of it or sharing it further. Just from a few whispers around school, it is enough to ruin someone’s reputation and even make them not want to come to school. Something to consider is how screenshots and rumors online can follow someone forever. Colleges look at future students’ social media accounts to see what kind of person they’re accepting into their school. Words spoken outlive high school, so the most important thing to take from this is to think about the things you’re saying about people because what you say can make people dread coming to school. We never truly know what someone has going on at home so we desperately need to be more mindful and stop spreading drama just because we’re bored.
