Can We be Friends with People Who Disagree with Us?

9 MINUTE READ

The BBC UNBOXD Report came out earlier this month, surveying the attitudes and lifestyles of Gen Z (16-24 year olds) in the UK. The results will inform their programming for the younger generation going forward. The findings of the Report around attitudes to friendship and disagreements seem to reinforce a progression towards greater isolation and loneliness among young people in the UK. Author Yang-May Ooi reflects on the implications for our society not just at present but into the future. 

Gen Z’s Friendship Crisis: Disagreement and Isolation

One finding of the Report has been highlighted by the wider media is that almost 40% of these young people have difficulty being friends with people who do not hold the same views as them. 

You can read a summary of the UNBOXED Report  here – https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2026/unboxd-live-digbeth 

Am I being an alarmist old woman by saying that this finding worries me a great deal? 

It seems to tie in with the ease with which youngsters appear to cancel others whose views they experience as upsetting. When someone is shut down from speaking – or defending themselves against false accusations – the prevailing viewpoint dominates. It gives the illusion of safety because everyone appears to agree. It also gives those who hold the dominant viewpoint a feeling of power. We all know that good feeling of being right – and being told we are right by others around us who also agree with our rightness reinforces that feeling of safety and powerfulness. 

But is that sense of safety and power based on any real foundation if a different point of view is so terrifying, unsettling and disruptive that our fight or flight instincts immediately kick in with huge ferocity to shut it down? 

It feels Safer to Cancel People who Disagree with Us

It seems to me that there is a lot of fear in people who need to cancel others. Where such ostracism is carried out in some cases with such fury and inhumanity that it can destroy their peers mental health or drive them to suicide, I feel it shows the all consuming terror in the hearts of those doing the cancelling. I am not making excuses for their behaviour but rather trying to think myself into what might cause such extreme reactions. 

My take – and it’s just my interpretation, which may be wrong – is that the cancellers may perceive the opposing viewpoint to be such a threat of annihilation to their worldview, and thus to their whole being, that it feels to them that the holder of that viewpoint needs to be annihilated – whatever the cost – in order for their own sense of equilibrium to be restored.

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Whereas, maybe the only thing that might be going on is that they perhaps have not learnt to manage their own feelings. And somehow, there seems to have been a message that has  moulded their growing up years: that it is someone else’s responsibility to manage how they feel and to make the world around them safe for them without any need for self-ownership. Is this a reasonable analysis? Maybe, maybe not.

The Power of  Curiosity and Listening

Am I being old-fashioned to believe that it is in conversation and dialogue, not just with our friends, but a whole range of people from different backgrounds and beliefs that we learn about life and what it is to be human? That is how we can make connections and build relationships. 

Would it not be healthier to talk things over with a friend who holds a differing view? Be curious, listen, try to understand where they may be coming from. And to have the chance to share where you are coming from. We may not change the other person’s mind – but that is not the goal of the conversation. Rather it is to weave a human connection. And to hold inside us the mixed feelings that may arise and be able express difficult ones with respect and consideration for the other person’s feelings. And to be able to agree to disagree with the bond of friendship still intact. 

Might we be open to the chance that we may be wrong? That our views are incorrect? That the other person may actually be right? Might we be open to having our mind changed by the other viewpoint? Or maybe we are both wrong? Or both right for different reasons? Is there really such a thing as right anyway? Might we have missed some crucial information? Might there be an angle we might not yet have considered? Are we the ones being biased and prejudiced?

There is value in asking open questions and truly seeking to understand. To explore together a tricky issue. And in being humble.

The key also, I think, is respect the person holding different views. They may hold their views for good reasons, arising from their life experience, character, background and more. Just like we may hold our views for similar good reasons. While we may disagree with the content / views, we need to still value that person for being a fellow human being. So in our conversations, we need to maintain good manners and civility even though we may feel strongly about what we are talking about. 

“With respect….”

In the law courts and in Parliament, there can be vociferous and emotive debates on issues but the custom of referring to one’s opponent as “my honourable friend” or “my learned friend” is a way to separate the passion regarding the content from the respect for the other person. The phrase “with respect” has a similar function when it prefaces a statement that disagrees with someone. 

I am not suggesting we use these formal phrases in ordinary discussions. I raise them to remind us of how we might conduct disagreements in a respectful and considerate way. What might be some ways we might signal that while we disagree vehemently with our friend, we still love and respect them as our fellow human? No doubt, we each have our own styles for doing that. 

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Good Mates across the Divide

A friend from school, Lavinia*, loved fox hunting back in the day when it was unrestricted – yes, I went to a posh school. At uni, she shared a house with Karen* who was from a working class background – and was an anti-hunt protestor. They were an incongruous pair of best mates, Lavinia with her cut-glass accent and Home Counties look of Barbour and shoulder-length auburn hair and Karen with her buzzcut and mismatched charity shop clothes and Doc Martens. They would drive together to hunt meets in Lavinia’s VW Beetle where Lavinia would head over to the horses and change into her red coat and breeches while Karen got her placard out of the boot and join the gang of protestors chanting anti-hunt slogans. 

These days, they probably would not be friends at all. Or if they were, I fear that their peers might threaten to cancel each of them for the audacity to be friends with someone on the opposite side of their cause. 

A Threat to the Future of Society?

If this trend continues without being addressed, I fear that our world will become even more fragmented and intolerant, splitting into factions and sub-factions of people who cannot brook any disagreement, no matter how mild or small the difference might be. These young people will become adults and rise in seniority in the workplace, academia and other institutions, and my worry is that they could bring with them their lack of relationship skills and a more and more entrenched belief in their own rightness. What would that world look like in decades to come?

The same BBC Report also found that over 40% of today’s Gen Z feel lonely and isolated. And 55% say that community is important to them. 

These latter two findings are immensely sad. When coupled with the first finding that started this article, what I see is a lack of human skills for navigating difference and difficulty and for recognising and managing emotions. There seems also to be a devaluation of tolerance and compromise, that ability to live and let live that we all need in order to thrive in community and enjoy healthy relationships.

How could that isolation and loneliness impact on their worldview as they grow up into the adult world? How might that longing for community in that context manifest? Am I being over the top in picturing authoritarian regimes from the last century which have a knack for corralling frightened, isolated people into strong like-minded communities with a penchant for little red books or shiny high-booted uniforms?  What a sense of safety and power there must be in such communities that tolerate no dissenters, encourage citizens to report on each other and seek to eliminate those designated as outsiders/ unclean/ disruptive influences and more… 

Do you agree? Maybe you don’t…

What do you think? For those of you who have children perhaps who are Gen Z – or perhaps you are a Gen Z-er reading this… Is there something I am missing? Is the Report too narrow? Am I being unfair to the young people – or over-reacting by jumping to the worst case scenario? 

Please disagree with me – with good manners and civility if possible!

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Sources/ Further Reading

https://www.thegazelle.org/issue/216/cancel-culture-mental-health

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/oxford-university-student-committed-suicide-due-to-cancel-culture-probe-finds-6978124

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Photos:

Riders – https://pixabay.com/photos/hunting-horses-slip-hunt-autumn-362296/

Two megaphones: https://pixabay.com/vectors/argument-loud-discussion-conflict-6080057/

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