In the days before the Internet, critical (批判性的) thinking was the most important skill of well-educated people. But in the digital age, according to Anastasia Kozyreva, a social scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development, an even more important skill is “critical ignoring”.
As the researchers point out, we live in an attention economy where content producers on the Internet compete (竞争) for our attention. They attract us with a lot of emotional and eye-catching stories while providing little useful information, so they can expose (暴露) us to money-making advertisements. Therefore, we are no longer customers but products, and each link we click is a sale of our time and attention. To protect ourselves from this, Kozyreva calls for learning the skill of critical ignoring, in which readers control their information environment on purpose to reduce exposure to false and low-quality information.
According to Kozyreva, critical ignoring includes three strategies. The first is to design our environments, which involves getting rid of the low-quality yet hard-to-resist (抵制) information from around. Successful dieters need to keep unhealthy food out of their homes. Similarly, we need to set up a digital environment where attention-grabbing items are kept out of sight. As with dieting, if one tries to depend on willpower not to click eye-catching “news”, he’ll surely fail. So, it's better to just keep them out of sight in the beginning.
The next is to make a judgement about whether the information is reliable, so that you can be protected from false and misleading information. It can be realized by checking the source in the top news media which is widely considered as being trustworthy.
The last goes by the phrase “do not feed the trolls”. Trolls are actors who spread false and hurtful information online on purpose to cause harm. It may be appealing to respond to them to set the facts straight, but trolls just care about annoying others rather than facts. So, it’s best not to reward their bad behaviour with our attention.
By improving our critical ignoring skills in these ways, we can make the most of the Internet while avoiding being hurt by those who try to control our attention, time, and minds.
12. What is “critical ignoring”?
A.The process of spotting and analyzing poor quality data. |
B.The skill of not paying attention to online information. |
C.The ability to analyze information to come to a conclusion. |
D.The art of choosing what information you let into your life. |
13. Why does the author mention dieters in paragraph 3?
A.To discuss the quality of information. | B.To prove the benefits of healthy food. |
C.To show the importance of environments. | D.To explain the effectiveness of willpower. |
14. What should we do to deal with Internet trolls according to the text?
A.Expose their intention. | B.Turn a deaf ear to them. |
C.Correct their behaviour. | D.Send hard facts to them. |
15. What is the text mainly about?
A.Importance of critical ignoring in online search. |
B.Ways to practice critical ignoring in the digital age. |
C.Benefits of critical ignoring in the attention economy. |
D.Strategies to improve critical thinking among online users. |