Gossip is a very powerful force, especially in a person's younger years. Gossip is powerful because we are social animals, and what people in our lives have to say about someone naturally influences our opinion of that person, regardless of whether or not it’s true. Whether or not it’s true almost isn’t as important as whether it's good or bad, because really what it reflects is whether people have a generally positive or negative view of that person, which will affect how we ourselves view him or her.
This is why gossip is so dangerous. Rumors can often have no grain of truth in them, because all it takes for a rumor to start it to say something about someone, and anyone could say anything about anyone, regardless of truth. One way to help limit the potentially harmful effect of rumors is to be aware of the effect they have, both the temptation to hear them and spread them, and to remember that they are often not true and almost never entirely true, and that they can cause harm to the people they’re about.
