About gossip and other aimless chatter!

I agree that everybody gossips....some gossip more, some less...but everybody does talk about others at some point of time, because we are all connected!
But how much of gossip should be practiced? How much of it should be encouraged and tolerated?
Do we gossip because we have nothing better to talk?
Or we gossip because we don't want to touch on the more important issues?
I think it's the later! We gossip because we want to keep people's attention away from our own issues and troubles. It's a defensive technique wherein we distract people by talking about someone else.

The troubling time is when people can not have a normal conversation without any form of gossip in it.
"Hey how are you? Long time...Do you know so and so?"
"Who? Why?"
"Just like that. Heard he got fired from work because of some money racket!!"

And so it goes on.
I agree we do need to know certain things that are happening around us.
But I totally disagree with the way it is morally and ethically accepted as a part of our survival and passed on from generation to generation as a value, forming a part of our culture.