It's funny how you think this is some kind of game that should be won.
It's not being a coward, it's not having to deal with little kids who can't learn to close their mouths.
If I am telling my friends something that I trust them with and it turns out they tell other people that I didn't want to know about, then why would I want to keep putting up with it.
You can't win everything, so sometimes it is better for people to relocate to a different place to get away from all the drama, especially if he is being laughed at by the entire school.
If being smart means being a coward then so be it.
I never insinuated it was a game - that's your observation.
All I was saying was that he shouldn't "start" then not "finish". And if you're saying he should just relocate instead of confront his mistake, then he'll not learn anything from his mistake. That was the point: he needs to learn and if running away whenever a problem arises looks like it's a good advice he should take, then that's fine.
But it's not wise, and who knows how big the situation is. He's only said he's been avoiding his friends. He hasn't said anything else about his friends. They could be laughing at him, but it can't go on forever. They'll find something else to focus on, and it wasn't a wise decision in the first place to tell his friends about it. If anything, it's helped him realize they weren't his friends to begin with.
All he could do now, is confront them and maybe change up the story, or simply de-friend them and find new friends.
The thing will subside eventually - as long as he doesn't give it a reason not to.
Really, though, you should think about it. Running away can be an option but it's not always wise to run away from problems. Especially problems like this. By even asking his parents: it'll be making it worse. They'll start to suspect there's something going on and if they went to his school to fish out some information: things would get really worse.
