There is an important difference between toxicity and disagreement.

Unfriending reasonable dissenters helps build the very echo chambers we complain about.

Creative thinking depends on constructive conflict.

The goal isn't to change their mind. It's to keep developing yours.

You went apple picking last weekend and posted a few photos. An old high school friend comments that you should be careful. Those apples are probably covered with pesticides and genetically engineered anyway. “Frankenfood,” he calls them, another example of corporations tampering with nature.

You haven't seen him in 30 years. You remember him as perfectly reasonable. Still, you don't feel like arguing about apples. You hide his posts for 30 days.

A month later, he's back. This time it's something about electric cars. You roll your eyes and keep scrolling.

Then one morning you're already in a bad mood. He posts something else you find completely wrong. You start typing a response. Delete it. Try again. Finally, you think, Why am I doing this to myself?

To be clear, I'm not talking about people who are abusive, prejudiced, threatening, or trying to sell you something. I'm talking about something much more ordinary: people whose ideas annoy you. Unfriending them may be good for your emotional health. But it may be bad for your creativity.

We Are Building Our Own Echo Chambers

We hear a lot about echo chambers, usually as something being done to us. Facebook, LinkedIn, and other platforms learn what we like, then give us more of it. Before long, the algorithm has surrounded us with people who see the world pretty much the way we do.

But that's only half the story.

Every time we hide, mute, unfollow, or unfriend someone because we disagree with them, we make our world a little more agreeable. We also make it a little narrower. Eventually, our ideas mostly encounter other ideas like themselves. We begin........

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