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You do raise a good point re: tradeoffs in a healthy society. Mill anticipated this objection and addressed it directly. He didn't advocate for free speech without consequences but developed a harm principle specifically to establish what limits are acceptable. Acceptable limits on thought and speech should be based on demonstrable harm, rather than alleged offence, discomfort, or the current popular opinion or cultural disapproval.
He recognises the need to set some limits, yet also the dangers of who gets to set them. Historically, those with power to restrict speech have restricted truth as falsehood. The bar for restrictions should be very high, not because free speech should be absolute, but because the dangers of overzealous restrictions far outweigh the cost of permitting speech we might personally find objectionable. Even completely false opinions might have their value as they force defenders of truth to better articulate their position or reasoning, and prevents beliefs from becoming prejudiced, or platitudes.
I thought I'd share since it's relevant and there may be some younger readers here that might not have come across his work. I really recommend reading it, even if it's an LLM summary as an introduction (as seems to be the trend nowadays)
Edited to fix a few typos (typing from mobile)
1. https://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlLbty.html#book-reader
I don't think restricting things such Holocaust denial, or declaring whole ethnicities as subhuman to fan the fires of racial or ethnical hatred is really being overzealous in restricting speech. Which is essentially what people are objecting to here.
Maturity implies that, while I might retain a right to be a dickhead, everyone (including me) would be better off if I put on my big-people pants.
Beside just repackaging your point, though, there is tremendous power to be had in setting oneself up as a gatekeeper.
The power to regulate where the line is drawn on just how free speech can be is a gateway drug to tyranny.
Thus, the concern is less the speech itself than the tyranny begotten from regulating the speech.
Absolute freedom devolves into tyranny super fast. If a democratically elected government cannot regulate how society operates on a base level, my only resourcento you retaining your right to be a dickhead is me retaining my right to have you swallow my fist in retribution.
I really don't want to live in such a society. Better to have some regulated basic civility.
That is why a democracy with well functioning institutions is important. Power is fractured so that there are many checks and balances.
It's important that we have the right to criticize the government, and to keep those in power in check.
We don't need to ensure every dickhead can deny the Holocaust, or call black people monkeys, or claim that 5G technology is a conspiracy to kill those that take vaccines to ensure we have proper rights to speech in that 'goldilocks" zone.
Except that power has been centralized: see the national debt.