I'm building a laravel project which is a community platform, so it's gonna need a follower logic (pretty similar to twitter, instagram, etc). I already created the logic for authentication and profile, but, when researching and writing the code for the followers state and check if the user is following someone, i got the functions on my model, which now is something like:

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\MustVerifyEmail;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;
use Laravel\Sanctum\HasApiTokens;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use HasApiTokens, HasFactory, Notifiable;

    /**
     * The attributes that are mass assignable.
     *
     * @var array<int, string>
     */
    protected $fillable = [
        'name',
        'email',
        'password',
        'phone',
        'description',
        'profilepicture',
        'status',
    ];

    /**
     * The attributes that should be hidden for serialization.
     *
     * @var array<int, string>
     */
    protected $hidden = [
        'password',
        'remember_token',
    ];

    /**
     * The attributes that should be cast.
     *
     * @var array<string, string>
     */
    protected $casts = [
        'email_verified_at' => 'datetime',
    ];

    public function following()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('App\Models\User', 'followers', 'follower_user_id', 'user_id')->withTimestamps();
    }

    public function isFollowing(User $user)
    {
        return !is_null($this->following()->where('user_id', $user->id)->first());
    }
}

And on my Profile Controller, I have:

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;
use App\Models\User;


class Profile extends Controller

{
    public function show($id)
    {
    $user = User::where('id', $id)->firstOrFail();
    $me = Auth::user();
    $is_edit_profile = (Auth::id() == $user->id);
    $is_follow_button = (!$is_edit_profile) && (!$me->isFollowing($user));
    return view('profile', ['user' => $user, 'is_edit_profile' => $is_edit_profile, 'is_follow_button' => $is_follow_button]);
    }
}

But VSCode says that i have a undefined method isFollowing in my controller, in the line:

$is_follow_button = (!$is_edit_profile) && (!$me->isFollowing($user));

Someone have a clue of why is this happening? I'm using Laravel 8. It's one of my first big projects, so previously sorry for any rookie mistake. Thanks for your time and help!