You're conflating thoughtful self-examination of your own beliefs and the motivations behind them with simply abandoning those beliefs. Just because you hold a

You're conflating thoughtful self-examination of your own beliefs and the motivations behind them with simply abandoning those beliefs. Just because you hold a belief that goes against the majority opinion doesn't necessarily mean that you're wrong, but neither does it give any guarantee that you are right, either. These are exactly the cases which warrant the most thorough research and self-examination. The point that the parent is trying to make is that so often, nowadays especially, people will simply shut down and refuse to hear any challenges to their most tightly held beliefs. Instead, they choose to retreat to the comfort of like-minded echo chambers - something that is all too easy with the prevalence of algorithmically reinforced Facebook news feeds and heavily moderated subreddits which explicitly ban any dissenting opinions.