Critical Thinking 101
When I was a child, my parents used to scream at me about using common sense. Then there were the catchy phrases about how common sense was the least common thing around in society.
Now, I’m hanging out in the year two thousand twenty four, and I’m not sure if common sense made a comeback but there seems to be a lot less children racing across the neighborhood streets without looking both ways. There is however, a startling lack of critical thinking. We went from a generation of people that was weary of anything they read online because they were cognizant of the fact that anybody could put anything they wanted online to a people who blindly believe memes online because it sounded true.
“definitions matter and words matter because communication and understanding matters. ”
With the increase in usage and dependency of the internet, we have forgotten one key aspect of the internet—anybody can post anything on the internet. Well, I’m not sure we have forgotten it as much as embraced it. We follow social media influencers and bloggers and people whose entire job is to post things online. We’re aware that anybody can post anything online but we all started operating under the assumption that everybody is a credible source for information.
As a society, we’ve lost the art of critical thinking. We’ve lost the art of thinking for ourselves. Gone are the days of having to prove your stance, your opinion, or pointing to the evidence that supports your statement. Now, you just have to put some words on a visually pleasing image and you can go viral. Viral posts are seen as accurate and credible and then you gain more followers or likes and whatever else. Our information is sourced through dopamine hits instead of accuracy. If it feels true it must be true.
In college, we learn about the CRAAP test. This is a system of questions/things to think about when evaluating whether or not a source is a good source to use for papers.
What does CRAAP stand for?
C- Currency
R- Relevance
A- Authority
A- Accuracy
P- Purpose
These are five factors that are key to evaluating whether not a source was good enough to use for your papers. Let’s break this down a little bit to see what this would look like in action.
Currency- how recent is the source? How current is the information cited in the source?
Relevance- how relevant to the topic is the source? How does this information fit with your point?
Authority- who is saying this and why does it matter what they say?
Accuracy- how accurate is the information? Has other information come out to prove or disprove the information? Is there contradictory theories that would play into the accuracy of the source?
Purpose- what was the point or reason the source was created? What does the author want you to do with the information?
The cute little graphic image about anxiety posted by Anna789xo doesn’t mean that the information about anxiety is true. We need to remember that anybody can post anything online. When we are talking about memes and cute graphic images, we need to ask ourselves why the person is creating the image. Why are the videos being made? Most of the time, the purpose of these memes or graphics is to gain popularity. Most of the purpose in content creation is to create something people want to see. Why would I go to a therapist or a doctor who can help me with my anxiety or to even see if I have anxiety when I can look at pretty graphics on Instagram and diagnosis myself?
We live in an age where disorders are being diagnosed left and right and how many of us are asking who is doing the prescribing? Who is diagnosing these disorders? I spent years thinking I had an anxiety disorder because I related to or identified with social media graphics and things shared online. I never once saw a therapist for anxiety nor did I seek medical help for it. Yet, I claimed I had anxiety because if I saw it online and related to it, it had to be true.
My point here is not to discredit those with disorders or even question their having the disorders. I am trying to draw attention to how our society accepts truth in the form of things that could be beautifully decorated lies. In fact, most of the truth we accept comes from beautifully decorated lies.
Think of Eve and the enemy in the Garden of Eden. “Did God really say?” “You certainly will not die.” (Genesis 3) Eve just trusted whatever she was told by the enemy and we’re all living the result of that sin. That beautifully decorated lie is why we live in a world filled with so much sin.
Guys, Satan’s tactics haven’t changed. We’re living in a world filled with lies and we need to stop taking everything at face value. We need to take a couple extra seconds to ask some questions, to check the source.
“If I saw it online and related to it, it had to be true.”
Outside of the CRAAP test, we used to be better versed in propaganda tactics. So, in an effort to give this little 101 to Critical Thinking, I’m going to quickly share some propaganda tactics.
Bandwagon- being encouraged to jump onto a trend or believe something because “everybody is doing it” this tries to use mob mentality to get everybody to believe the same things.
Glittering Generalities- pretty sounding words that have no substance to make you believe something is good or positive without giving you actual reasons for why it is good.
Name Calling- literally, calling others who disagree names or giving labels to those in opposing camps. This is also used to convince people to buy the “in” things so that they are not “out.”
Testimonials- Using celebrities or popular people of influence to convince you to believe something or try a product
Emotional Appeal- tactics to appeal to emotions to make you feel something in order to convince you to believe something or make you want a product.
“Most of the truth we accept comes from beautifully decorated lies.”
There are other propaganda tactics so feel free to continue to research more. Theres are the big five. These were the ones I focused on teaching my middle school students because they are the ones we see most often in the world. In fact, during the lesson my students would end up shouting out all the different ways they saw these propaganda tactics in the things they watched and saw online.
Next time you see the pretty graphic on Instagram, ask a few follow up questions to yourself. You don’t have to go through then entire CRAAP tests or all the propaganda tactics but at least start with the question, “what does this person mean when they say this?”
Remember, definitions matter and words matter because communication and understanding matters.
Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash