Millennials, information assessment, and social media: An exploratory study on the assessment of critical thinking habits

Abstract

Critical thinking is as a systematic habit of being able to question information, confront different information sources seeking diversity of points of view, understanding statements, and being able to make inferences out of information. Critical thinking is an active behavior against information processing which influences in a positive way individual and organizational decision making. While we can observe different levels of critical thinking in different individuals, millennials are reputed to possess low critical thinking skills given their habit of passively receiving information through social media. In this paper, we study the critical thinking skills of millennials, and we explore the level of critical thinking shown in relation to the reported intensity of use of social media and other traditional media for information acquisition. The paper is based on a quantitative analysis of an incidental sample of 424 millennials.