How social media and the internet could be impacting our critical thinking skills

Information we get from the internet may be impacting our critical thinking skills. Educational psychology professor Jacqueline Leighton shares her insight.

All the information we get from social media and the internet may be impacting our critical thinking skills. Educational psychology professor with the University of Alberta Jacqueline Leighton joined CTV Your Morning Edmonton’s Kent Morrison with her insight.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kent Morrison: You said, “Even though secondary and post secondary school students have grown up with the internet and social media, they remain relatively naive about how to think critically.” Can you expand on that thought?

Jacqueline Leighton: Human beings generally are just built to be biased in the way that they search out information. We have a pre-existing tendency to want to find information that already confirms what we already believe in. Even if individuals have grown up with digital devices and lots of information, that doesn’t take away the fundamental wish and the fundamental drive to seek out information that confirms what we already believe in.

This is a fundamental bias that all people have, so critical thinking is different from that. It requires actively resisting that bias, actively resisting that drive and being able to seek out different perspectives, different information and being able to evaluate the evidence that underlies those different perspectives and different positions.

Kent: How does having a wealth of information on the internet and social media make critical thinking harder?

Jacqueline: The information that we get from devices is based on algorithms, whether it’s internet browsers or social media platforms. Those algorithms feed you information that essentially exploits the bias and the information that you’re receiving is based on an individual’s history of the things that they tend to like, the things that they tend to dislike and whatever it is that they’re spending a lot of time on.

Essentially, what online information and the information we get from devices is doing is that it’s driving individuals further and further into extremes because the information that people are getting every day is essentially confirming what they already believe in.

In order to break out of that, you need to be able to actively seek out information. We have to be highly aware to seek out information that confronts and resists and challenges what we already believe in.

Kent: Do you have any tips for people at home, either for themselves or for their kids, to teach these critical thinking skills?

Jacqueline: This is actually very difficult. People talk about it all the time, but it’s actually very difficult because it means that you have to surround yourself with individuals who are going to challenge what you think and that is highly uncomfortable for people. People get into fights. People get into all kinds of arguments when they’re challenged.

It requires an incredible amount of self-regulation to be able to have a conversation with somebody who is actively challenging the evidence, or whatever position that you are taking, but that is essentially what it requires. It requires, not only in classrooms, whether it’s in elementary, secondary, post secondary, but even in family settings with friends, to be able to surround yourself with individuals who are going to be able to say, “Why do you think that? What is the evidence behind that?” not in a negative or aggressive way but in a civil way, to be able to talk about the evidence for why it is that we actually hold the positions that we hold.

Being able to start talking about the evidence for why we believe what we believe begins the process of analyzing and even in conversation, evaluating. Is this really good evidence? Might there be a different position on this? Might that additional evidence or that additional position change my mind on whatever I started out believing?