Episode Details

268 : Importance of critical thinking skills in navigating social media

Guest Stephanie Simoes  from Critikid.com talks about the Importance of Critical Thinking Skills in Navigating Social Media and how to teach our children these skills.

Key Points:

• Critical thinking involves the ability to distinguish between logical and flawed reasoning, understanding logical fallacies, cognitive biases, symbolic logic, science literacy, and the limits of intuition.
• Kids need these skills to have productive conversations on social media, identify pseudoscience and misinformation, and interpret the overwhelming amount of information online.
• Stephanie offers courses like “Fallacy Detectors” for ages 8-12 and “Symbolic Logic for Teens” on her website critickid.com. She plans to release courses for younger kids (2-3 years) and up to 18 years old.
• Parents can learn alongside their kids by following CriticKid’s resources or using websites like “Thinking is Power” and Julie Bogart’s Raising Critical Thinkers books. (Julie was the guest  on episode 155 of this podcast)
• Practical tips include: saving real-life examples from social media to discuss with kids, scrolling through social media together and identifying fallacies, and thinking out loud about verifying information before sharing.

Resources Mentioned:

• Cranky Uncle app/website for identifying logical fallacies
• Building Critical Thinkers worksheets on Teachers Pay Teachers (coming soon on Critikid.com)
• Free resources: CriticKid’s Fallacy Detectors Part 1 (first video free), Symbolic logic worksheets

Where to find Stephanie  (@critikid)

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