Gossip is no longer seen as something to be ashamed of, something to avoid. Once a taboo, it’s now an accepted pastime. Open up Instagram or scroll through TikTok and you’ll see millions of girls uploading videos titled “Get ready with me while I tell you about my friendship break-up, why I don’t talk to my parents, my crazy ex,” etc. etc. Or self-proclaimed internet sleuths explain their theories of different popular events promising to tell you “what really happened.” Videos of people stringing together events and names that may or may not prove their theories but at the very least “makes you think.” 

The problem? These fun gossipy stories seem harmless enough but bleed into real peoples’ lives. Not only can slander ruin real people’s reputations, but gossip is also harmful for the person consuming and creating it.

I recently came across an Instagram reel of a 30-something woman showing how she applied high-quality press-on nails. “Sit with me as I do my nails and tell you why my husband and I don’t let my in-laws see their grandkids,” she invited her audience. She sat at her kitchen table as she glued on her bright plastic nails and began to detail every little complaint and slight annoyance her in-laws had inflicted on her. It’s hard not to feel like you’re her best friend and she’s ranting to you about her grievances, real or imagined, as she applies bits of glue and plastic to her fingers.

Maybe her story is correct, and her in-laws are the worst. Maybe she’s being petty and overacting. Or perhaps, like in most families, parents, in-laws, and children can be annoying, and family relationships tricky to manage. Either way, I couldn’t help but have a nagging feeling that it was none of my business hearing this stranger recount all the details of her strained family dynamics. This woman and her video are not unique. Videos of people criticizing their in-laws, fake friends, and coworkers online are now commonplace, creating a new niche genre. Some creators tell their own drama, but others read off Reddit forums or anonymous stories submitted by their followers.

It’s understandable why these videos are so popular. They sound like your best friend venting to you. It’s easy to forget there’s another side to this story. Easier still to push past the feeling that it might not be our business to know the drama and personal grievances of a stranger.

Maybe we can agree that putting out private details of your life is wrong. After all, it’s hurtful to the people the creator is posting about and will most likely hurt, not strengthen the creator’s relationships. But what if it’s all anonymous? Even if it’s wrong to create the content, would watching it hurt me? I don’t know anyone in the video, so what harm is watching the gossip of others?

Besides the obvious fact that increased demand will create more of a product that is hurtful to those directly involved, watching gossip is also hurtful.

According to physician and chronic pain expert David Hanscom, when people gossip negatively about others, this impacts their cortisol. He stated that when we gossip, “our cortisol goes up, which means your fuel consumption goes up.” He explained that if your body is constantly under this strain, it’s “like driving a car on the freeway in second gear. It just is running and racing and racing. So, any time you go into the mode of gossiping or speaking negatively about people, you’ve actually now fired up your fight-or-flight physiology.” In other words, consuming or creating gossip can trick your brain into thinking you are going through a stressful event and trigger that reaction in your brain and body.

If someone is often in the state of flight or fight, it can have long-term effects on their physical health and take energy away from other areas of their body. Hanscom noted that when this happens, “Your immune system starts attacking your own tissues. Your metabolism or fuel consumption starts taking fuel from your tendons and ligaments and cartilage, actually your brain.” Repeated gossiping will literally cause your physical body to break down. 

Gossip can not only hurt your physical health, but it can also negatively affect your mental focus. According to research by Thompson and Syme (2020), when a person engages with gossip, their “amygdala becomes overactive.” That’s “the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions like stress and excitement.” They added that “at the same time, your prefrontal cortex (which controls logical thinking and decision-making) loses its edge” when you listen to or engage in gossip. 

When your brain’s amygdala is overactive and the prefrontal cortex is not as sharp, it often “leads to poor focus and impulsive choices” as your body reacts to what it thinks is a stressful environment. 

Gossip has also been linked to declining focus, clouded judgment, and memory friction. The research found that “stress hormones triggered by gossip interfere with how your brain encodes and retrieves information, which can physically hinder your ability to learn or study.”

But the dangers of gossip go beyond our physical and mental state. As Christians, we should seek truth and avoid slander and gossip. The Bible warns strictly about “wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not” (1 Timothy 5:13). Today, social media provides an effortless virtual way one can wander house to house, drinking in delicious bits of strangers’ tea. 

Though the methods of gossip have evolved, God’s commands still remain the same, and we should be careful that the media we create and consume is not one that slanders or gossips. From Old Testament warnings to not associate with one who “goes about slandering” and “reveals secrets” to New Testament commands that tell us to not let “corrupting talk come out of your mouths,” we see God’s repeated desire for us to avoid slander and gossip (Proverbs 20:19; Ephesians 4:29). 

We are told not just to avoid gossiping but to avoid even those who participate in it. Maybe you don’t gossip, maybe even your friends don’t gossip, but what about your social media feed? Does your algorithm know your desire for videos of those that “reveal secrets”? The trend of secret sharing, story times, and tell-all videos can create a digital busybody that delights in wandering from video to video, becoming idle, and listening to things they ought not to.

Gossip is certainly entertaining, and today the access is simply a click or swipe away. But gossip is not the innocent pastime our social media feeds would have us believe. The societal taboo of gossip may be gone, but the physical and mental consequences still impact us. Not only can gossip impact our health and our relationships, it’s also clearly forbidden in Scripture. These tasty morsels of digital scuttlebuttmay be enticing, but the end result they produce is not. 

Katelyn Rafferty is a freelance writer.