High school students have always spread gossip   in the halls, on the walls and on the phone. Now it's on the Internet, too. On various message boards, kids write about whom they hate, whom they think have fallen in love with each other and record other often hurtful things that may or may not be true. Sixteen-year-old Jessica remembers once when some kids at her school wrote cruel things about her on the web. "They were just making fun of me," she says. They said she's really ugly, she's this, she's that, blah-blah-blah. Jessica's 11-year-old sister, Emma, admits she's used the web to write bad things about another girl, though she regrets it now. "After a while, you may feel like, how could I have been so mean? Or, why did I do that?" she says. Experts say gossip on the Internet can be more harmful than the old fashioned kind. It lasts longer and is taken more seriously. And, unlike ugly words on the bathroom wall, there's no way to get rid of it. If your kids are victims  of online gossip, Dr. Commanday suggests putting the gossip in to perspective  . "Point out to them how what's being said on the screen differs from what everyone knows about you as a person," Dr. Commanday says. You can also try what worked from Emma: keep your kids off the offensive   website! "When she was using it all the time, her name was there all the time. People were writing things about her," explains Patti Thrift, Emma's mother, "Since she has no longer had access to that, she's no longer a topic of conversation." The purpose of the passage is to   _  .
give some tips on how to prevent hurt of gossip on the Internet list the difference between the old fashioned gossip and gossip on the Internet advise students to keep away from the Internet introduce different kinds of hurt students might meet with