I’ve recently noticed a trend on TikTok where creators joke about protecting their peace too much and now only having two friends, one of whom is their mom. “Protecting your peace” involves cutting off any and everything in your life that is toxic and therefore damaging to your peace. In theory, this is a logical approach to life, but when we use the word “toxic” too liberally, this means cutting everyone off.

Many people have adopted this trend in their personal lives using it as justification and encouragement for ending tougher relationships. We as humans are meant to have full social circles with people of varying closeness to us and for different facets of our lives. Not having this creates unmeetable expectations for all of our relationships to be all-encompassing and perfect. 

The word “toxic” is an integral part of this trend, and it seems to have seeped outside of TikTok and into our everyday vocabulary. Toxic means to be “poisonous.” Nowadays, we use toxic to describe recurring challenges in our lives. For example, a friend who always asks to borrow your clothes and never gives them back. “Toxic” is so popular that in 2018 Oxford Dictionaries named “toxic” as the international word of the year. 

To be toxic means there’s no hope for you; you’re a bad person and nothing you do can change this “fact.” However, when we dig deeper into what people deem “toxic” behavior, we usually find what could be better described as human imperfection.  

Young people are told to cut off toxic people but not told what it means to be toxic. Labeling something as toxic oversimplifies the complex species that humans are. Of the few genuinely “toxic” people I’ve encountered in my life, they’ve all used this phrase very casually. Calling people toxic oversimplifies and villainizes humans for simply being human. 

We know that forgiveness is key in any relationship. However, we’re having a more difficult time forgiving people, making it tough to sustain the relationships we have. 

The trend of cutting people off to protect our peace has become so intense that people are even cutting off their families. Currently, 27% of Americans over 18 have cut off contact with a family member — typically these estrangements are not from extreme situations like child or domestic abuse but instead stem from poor and increasingly hostile communication. Notably, while the estranged in this study felt some relief in the moment, they ultimately felt incomplete, misunderstood and lonely in their lives. 

However depressing this research is, it also provides an informed path to keeping your social circle healthy. The estranged who reconciled all reported being happier when they kept up difficult relationships and most attribute adopting more realistic expectations for the relationship as the main reason reconciliation was possible. If we promote forgiveness over eliminating people from our lives we’ll not only be able to keep more relationships, but we’ll also be happier and more fulfilled. 

While the protecting your peace trend primarily impacts Gen Z, it’s indicative of a larger cultural shift we’re experiencing. It’s become normal to cut off our fellow humans and we don’t realize how damaging it is to ourselves. Instead, we should prioritize having strong and harmonious social connections for our well-being as humans. While it’s difficult to reconcile with people who feel wildly different from us, we need to be more understanding of others for our own peace. 

A better approach to protecting our peace is creating boundaries and having empathy towards others. It’s tempting to try to change people, but a more realistic and effective approach to happy relationships is communicating and understanding. 

We need a new narrative to gain traction on TikTok and other widely consumed outlets, one that promotes the normalcy of nuance, imperfection and commitment in relationships. It’s easy to believe everything you see on social media, but when it comes to friend and relationship advice I think we should leave it to the experts.