Reboot in the News

Too many business leaders are simply not reasoning through pressing issues, taking the time to evaluate a topic from all sides. Leaders often jump to the first conclusion, whatever the evidence. Even worse, C-suite leaders will just choose the evidence that supports their prior beliefs. A lack of metacognition — or thinking about thinking — is also a major driver, making people simply overconfident. This article defines three simple things that can be done at work or in daily life to improve critical thinking skills.

There’s a lot to feel guilty about these days as a parent: working too much to spend time with your children; feeding the aforementioned children a steady diet of pizza, peanut butter sandwiches and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish; ruining everyone else’s plane ride. Perhaps no source of parental guilt, however, gets more attention these days — when it can get our attention, that is — than the overuse of electronic devices.

Over the past year, Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies have ramped up efforts to purge their platforms of accounts spreading fake news, conspiracy theories and other untruths across the internet. But the democratization of the media and the expansion of social media in recent years is placing an increasing burden on us, the consumers of this avalanche of news and information, to do a better job of discerning fact from fiction.

Critical thinking can feel in short supply these days. Politics is more polarized than ever, the president regularly dismisses his opposition as enemies, losers, or phonies, while critics of the president cannot bear the thought of ever entertaining support for his ideas or actions.

There’s a growing premium on critical thinking. The skill of robust reasoning is increasingly crucial for work—and a successful life. People who know how to think logically, analyze and draw conclusions make better choices. According to researcher Heather Butler, good critical thinkers are less likely to foreclose on a home or carry large credit card balances.

Young people are tomorrow’s news creators and news consumers, and will soon make future-shaping decisions based on what they believe to be true. High school students are also teenagers, though, and while they may be technologically savvy, they are often psychologically unsophisticated and eager to be part of a cause or group — making them easy marks for the purveyors of misinformation. Newseum has created an in-person and online course for fighting fake news – developed for teenagers, by teenagers.