American boys and girls gossip the same amount-but they do it for different things, a university of Michigan study found.
It found that pre-teens gossip an average of 18 times an hour, devoting as much as 50 percent of their time to it.
The study did find some differences between boys talk and girls talk.
Girl aged 9 to 12 were more likely to talk about boys they had crushers on or boys other girls liked, said psychologist Jeffrey Parker. Boys rarely talked about the specific girls they liked, although they still talked about girl in general terms.
The study defined gossip as any "evaluation talk" about a person who was not on the room.