Self-nudging can also help us take control of our digital default settings, for instance, by restricting the use of our personal data for purposes of targeted advertisement. We may set specific times in which messages can be received, thereby creating pockets of time for concentrated work or socialising. We can, for instance, remove distracting and irresistible notifications. In the digital world, self-nudging aims to empower people to be citizen “choice architects” by designing their informational environments in ways that work best for them and that constrain their activities in beneficial ways. Each one responds to a different type of noxious information. Three main strategies exist for critical ignoring. Without it, we will drown in a sea of information that is, at best, distracting and, at worst, misleading and harmful. We understand it as a core competence for all citizens in the digital word. Critical ignoring is more than just not paying attention – it’s about practising mindful and healthy habits in the face of information overabundance. So what tools do we have at our disposal beyond critical thinking? In our recent article, we – a philosopher, two cognitive scientists, and an education scientist – argue that as much as we need critical thinking, we also need critical ignoring.Ĭritical ignoring is the ability to choose what to ignore and where to invest one’s limited attentional capacities. Second, investing critical thinking in sources that should have been ignored in the first place means that attention merchants and malicious actors have been gifted what they wanted, our attention. Critically thinking through all information and sources we come across would utterly paralyse us because we would never have time to actually read the valuable information we painstakingly identify.
Much of it comes from unvetted sources and lacks reliable indicators of trustworthiness. The ability to think critically is immensely important.īut is it enough in a world of information overabundance and gushing sources of disinformation? The answer is no for at least two reasons.įirst, the digital world contains more information than the world’s libraries combined. Thus equipped, they can evaluate the claims and arguments they see, hear, or read. In school, students are taught to closely and carefully read and evaluate information. The textbook cognitive strategy is critical thinking, an intellectually disciplined, self-guided and effortful process to help identify valid information.
Sign up for The Gleaner’s morning and evening newsletters. To regain control, we need cognitive strategies that help us reclaim at least some autonomy and shield us from the excesses, traps, and information disorders of today’s attention economy. More competition leads to shorter collective attention intervals, which lead to ever fiercer competition for our attention – a vicious circle. In 2013, for example, a hashtag on Twitter was popular on average for 17.5 hours, while in 2016, its popularity faded away after 11.9 hours. A 2019 analysis of Twitter hashtags, Google queries, or Reddit comments found that across the past decade, the rate at which the popularity of items rises and drops has accelerated.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that all this should take a toll on our collective attention. The more our eyeballs remain glued to the screen, the more ads they can show us, and the greater profits accrue to their shareholders. These platforms work overtime to hijack our attention by purveying information that arouses curiosity, outrage, or anger.
Their business model auctions off our most precious and limited cognitive resource: attention. The platforms that control search were conceived in sin.
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A boundless wealth of high-quality information is available at our fingertips right next to a ceaseless torrent of low-quality, distracting, false, and manipulative information.
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