As a speaker, I believe in the power of words and the value of disagreement. A few days ago, a colleague messaged me about a complex issue—one that would have taken five minutes to resolve in a call. Instead, I spent ten crafting a carefully hedged, emotionally optimized text. I wasn’t trying to be efficient; I was avoiding friction. No awkward pause, no real-time tension, no chance of being misread.
It was a small decision, but it’s part of a much bigger pattern. We are now living in a system designed to eliminate struggle, not just in how we buy or scroll, but in how we speak, work, and relate. And that comes at a cost we’re only beginning to understand.
We Didn’t Just Build Tools. The Tools Built Us.
The design principles of modern tech—speed, ease, and optimization—have become our mental models for everything else in real life. Amazon’s one-click system didn’t just change shopping; it reprogrammed our patience, making any delay feel intolerable. Dating apps taught us that people are swipeable and replaceable, eroding the patience needed for real connections.
These weren’t just new tools that changed our actions; they reshaped our sense of self. Now, in a world engineered for infinite choice, commitment feels like a risk, and discomfort feels like failure. Friction has become a threat to avoid at all costs.
The Comfort Trap
Frictionless feels good—and that’s the problem. The more seamless the interface, the more allergic we become to anything rough, real, or resistant. This shows up everywhere. In relationships, a moment of awkwardness can be grounds for exit; YouGov research found that 27% of Americans are estranged from at least one family member, a trend suggesting we’re increasingly unable to navigate difficult relationships.
In workplaces, direct critique gets pathologized as a threat to “psychological safety”. It’s no surprise that Gallup data shows only 32% of employees are engaged at work, with many citing a lack of honest communication and meaningful feedback. In the public square, opposing views aren’t debated—they’re flagged or muted. We’re not just becoming more divided; we’re becoming less able to bear division.
The irony is stark: as algorithms create increasingly hyper-personalized experiences that eliminate friction in our digital lives, we become less tolerant of the natural friction that comes with human interaction. The very technology designed to smooth our experience is actually increasing our discomfort with the unavoidable misunderstandings and tensions of real relationships, driving us toward isolation.
Friction Is the Price of Growth
We’ve forgotten the obvious: friction isn’t the bug—it’s the feature. We learn to walk through the friction of falling. Muscles grow by resisting weight. Ideas crystalize through wrestling.
The most dangerous consequence of our frictionless world isn’t the tech itself, but what it teaches us to believe:
- if something is unfamiliar, it must be unsafe
- if someone disagrees, they must be a threat
Our tools remove the need to tolerate discomfort, so we stop building the capacity to handle it. Soon, we stop seeing the difference between disagreement and harm altogether.
The Human Edge
We weren’t built for smooth. We were built to endure abrasion—and emerge more whole. That is where creativity lives, where intimacy is built, and where leaders are made. Friction is the artist’s struggle, the mentor’s challenge, and the co-founder’s disagreement. It’s the signal you’re doing something that matters, that’s worth wrestling over. While frictionless systems feel easy, they degrade our output and efficiency in the long term. Fear of uncomfortable conversations creates cultures of dishonesty, making innovation impossible.
If we eliminate friction, we don’t just lose discomfort. We lose courage, resilience, and each other. We can keep designing tools that optimize for ease and then act shocked when people can’t handle conflict or complexity. Or we can do something harder and far more valuable: rebuild our capacity for tension, reclaim discomfort as a requirement, and remember that the most human thing we can do isn’t to avoid the heat—but to stay in the room when things get hard—and speak anyway.