5 Reasons Why You Need to Stop Being Nosy

Are you a nosy person? Do you find it hard to mind your own business? Nosiness is a problem that needs to be stopped. Learn why you need to stop being nosy today.

Honestly, I don't think anyone ever thinks about being nosy anymore. I find that people (myself included) feel entitled to know all the information everyone else does about everything. We give ourselves over to gossip, and we certainly give ourselves over to nosiness. 

Being nosy can come in all shapes and sizes. Trying to pressure a friend into sharing more than they want to, just so we can have all the information. Stalking people online to figure out information that's really none of our business. Gossip and nosiness are not exactly the same, but they are closely related.

It starts at a very young age. In middle school, everyone wants to know who has a crush on who. In high school, everyone starts trying to figure out who got in trouble over the weekend, or who got wasted at the popular girl's party. Who's dating who? Who broke up with who? Then in college, the nosiness continues. Everyone thinks they deserve to know what is going on in everyone else's life- it's basically a source of entertainment!

As a woman, I personally think that women are much worse about being nosy than men. I can also say that I struggle with nosiness myself. No, I am not nosy for "bad" reasons. I mostly (but not always, I admit) genuinely want to know if people are okay. And yet I do find myself feeling entitled to information and I can feel offended when people choose not to share. But someone's information is not mine to have just because I want it. If someone wants to confide in me, they can. And if I can tell someone is upset, sure - I can go check on them. Checking in and learning more personal details about someone isn't the problem. The problem is the selfishness that accompanies nosiness.

If we find ourselves wanting to know more about someone's situation solely for our own entertainment or because we don't want to be "the only person who doesn't know", we need to check ourselves.

People are not shows that we can binge-watch on Netflix. They are humans with feelings - pains, joys, and sorrows. People's lives are not there for us to read and analyze. Their lives are between them, God, and the people they choose to let into their circle. When we try to break into that circle through nosiness, we cause problems that we may have never intended.

5 Reasons Why You Need to Stop Being Nosy

Being Nosy Causes a Divide

When I was in college, there was this girl that I really wanted to be friends with. I wanted her to like me and think a lot of me. And I think she did. I would encourage her every now and then, and we would speak briefly when we saw each other, but we weren't best friends or anything. After we had graduated, I noticed that her relationship status wasn't up on Facebook anymore. I really liked her and her boyfriend and I hoped they were okay and still together. I cared. I really did. So I wrote her on Facebook and asked her about it.

She never said anything about it, but I knew as soon as I hit "send" (and even before I did, really), that the question was not mine to ask. She may not have thought anything of it, but ever since then, I have felt like there's not much chance of developing a friendship. If nothing else, I caused a divide in my own mind and confidence level.

Sometimes, the divide doesn't just happen in our own minds though. Sometimes people do not want to be asked personal questions, especially by people who aren't in their close circle. Sometimes asking prying, nosy questions can cause people to put up a wall and guard against the nosy person. And who could blame them, really?

Being Nosy Makes People Wonder If You Are a Gossip

As I mentioned before, while gossip and nosiness are not exactly the same, they are closely related. A lot of the time, people who are nosy are also gossips, in my experience. Not always, of course, but there is often a correlation. Even really good people tend to jump on the gossip train in a heartbeat. I try not to be a gossip, and as a general rule, I feel I do an okay job with it. But even though I'm not like that, when I act nosy and try to pry, I make myself look like I'm a gossip. No, it's not all about people's perceptions of me, but I would like to know that I haven't brought any of those false views upon myself.

Likewise, being nosy may bring about a temptation to gossip. We all of a sudden have more information that we could share, especially if we happen upon a conversation that is related to the subject. In those moments, we might find it too temping to be "the person who knows the most", and share information that isn't ours. Since nosiness is often born of selfishness, our selfishness might also spur us on to join in on gossip and be the center of the conversation.  See how selfishness, gossip, and nosiness are so closely related?

You May Start to Feel Entitled

Once we start prying into someone's life, we may start feeling like it's our right to know what's happening in their lives. News flash, it's not our right.

Even if we have the best of intentions (like my example from college), we still are not entitled to answers. Just because one person confides in us one time, does not mean that we need to be asking them about every little thing that happens in their lives. It's still none of our business. We may be trying to be kind, but nosiness doesn't come across as kind- it comes across as rude.

*Again, this is different from having our core group of people with whom we share our burdens and seek to help one another in the Lord. Christians in this context should be vulnerable with one another. Likewise, the goal of learning the deeper things in our friends hearts is different here. When done in a Christlike way, this is separate from nosiness.

Related: How to Find a Great Christian Community

You May Get Addicted to Nosiness

We tend do things in small steps at first, but those small steps usually end up turning into giant leaps. We often start with a few M&M's, but that somehow turns into eating the whole bag in one sitting. Drinking our woes away can easily turn into an addiction. A root of bitterness towards our spouse can slowly tear our whole marriage apart. In the same way, nosiness starts as wondering if we can pry just a little bit. Maybe we can figure out what's going on - but it turns into a terrible pattern of expecting everyone to share their entire lives with us. When they don't, we get offended. When we get offended, we harbor anger. When we harbor anger, we hold grudges. And then we suddenly look back on our lives and realize that we are angry with people who have not wronged us, and we caused a distance between us and people who had the potential to be good friends.

Nosiness Tends to Be Inwardly Focused

When we are nosy, we are often focusing on things that don't matter. It's not that people's problems aren't important - they are. But when I am nosy, I tend to start wondering "What's going on? Why didn't they tell me about it? Maybe they don't like me and don't trust me with their secrets". At that point, my focus is on myself, not on them. They may be struggling with something really big, yet here I am worrying about why they didn't confide in me. I'm more worried about their opinion of me than I am their well-being. At that point, my intentions are no longer kind-hearted. Instead, they are selfish.

After I wrote my friend from college on Facebook trying to pry into her life, I felt so worried about what she thought of me. I was still concerned about her, but I was also very preoccupied with what her opinion of me was. Nosiness has a way of turning good intentions into bad habits and unintended selfishness.

Caring about people is a good thing, and genuinely checking on them and making sure they are okay is different than nosiness. We should be checking in on people and showing them we care. We just need to be aware of our own motives and intentions, and we need to make sure we are not moving from caring to nosiness and gossip.

I hope that this will cause all of us to think hard before we allow ourselves to be nosy any longer. Decide to stop the nosiness in its tracks -- before a nasty cycle gets started.