Critical thinking is not enough to save us from the trolls

Know what to ignore

Add this to your list of must-have skills to navigate the online world: Critical ignoring. 

Psychologists, scientists and educators have determined that critical thinking skills aren’t enough to save us from being overwhelmed by the vast amount of garbage online. Rather than take the time to evaluate, check and verify everything we read, we need to quickly recognize rabbit holes and disinformation and move on quickly. I had a name for this when I was a journalist.

I called it a BS detector. It was built on:

1. Intuition

2. A sharp ear

3. Life experience

4. Industry knowledge

5. A nose for things that didn’t smell right

Sound familiar? We all have varying degrees of these skills. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just ignore what smelled fishy. I still had to muck through the mud to verify or disprove the smell. Usually, it wasn’t outright misinformation but a nuance, deliberate omission or exaggeration that painted the company in a more favorable light.

Unfortunately, a lot of the internet smells fishy these days

We need to retrain our BS detectors to sniff out the prevalent one-sided stories, half-truths, opinions and outright misinformation.

In many cases, we should be ignoring more stuff than we grace with our time and attention. While aggravating, I’m not sure developing critical ignoring and a more powerful BS detector are bad things.

Both make us build discernment. Both make us think, er, critically. We emerge as more careful, intentional and smarter consumers.

And we save our time and attention for more fulfilling, unplugged pursuits and quests.

Now, go wander outside!

---

3 Resources for You

Books, articles, tips, tools and advice to help you unplug. (Books may be aff links.)

Tools for critical ignoring: When  Critical Thinking Isn’t Enough to Beat Information Overload We Need to Learn Critical Ignoring

Details on critical thinking: To Navigate the Dangers of the Web You Need Critical Thinking But Also Critical Ignoring

The academic background: Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens

---

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to ignore.”  William James, American philosopher

Amazingly, studies show that looking at photos of Nature calms your mind, reduces stress and increases concentration. I’m happy to share my view with you!