Essay on Critical Thinking Example

This example essay on critical thinking explains how learning to question, think deeper, and check facts can help students make smarter choices in today’s fast-paced world.

Written by

Kateryna B.

Published on

Jul 18, 2025

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This essay was written by our AI-powered tool. It follows a clear structure with an introduction, main idea, organized body paragraphs, and a conclusion, making it a helpful guide for students learning how to write strong academic essays.

Critical Thinking in the Age of Virality: Why Going Viral Should Raise Eyebrows, Not Just Eyelids

In an age where digital information travels faster than we can comprehend, a tweet, a TikTok video, or a screenshot can rack up millions of views before anyone thinks to ask, “Is this even true?” In a culture of processing through shares and likes, popularity often assumes the position of truth. Critical thinking, the ability to ask questions, analyze, and validate information, is no longer just a priority; it is now an emergency.

In this essay, we will argue that, in the era of overnight content virality, teaching and instilling critical thinking is not optional, it is a survival mechanism for self-reference, to protect us from information overwhelm, emotional manipulation, and bad decision-making.

Virality Rewards Emotion, Not Accuracy

Digital platforms exist to amplify that which gets attention: anger, humour, fear; not necessarily what is thoughtful, or what is accurate. For example, a study at MIT shows that false stories spread six times faster than the truth on Twitter.

Critical thinking disrupts the velocity of these viral stories. It invites the reader to ask - The source? Evidence? Who benefits from thinking this? If critical readers do not think critically, they may become conduits for content that exerts the greatest emotional pull. Teaching students how to slow down, how to fact-check claims and how to evaluate emotional responses to content is a viable response to how misinformation goes viral.

Cognitive Biases in Digital Spaces

The human brain is predisposed to shortcuts such as confirmation bias, anchoring, and groupthink. These become even more dangerous online. Algorithms provide content that we agree with, which retains our beliefs and creates echo chambers. Critical thinking is the antidote. It enables students to identify bias, themselves, and others. Once users realize that we all have brains that want to see patterns and want to believe comforting lies instead of difficult truths, they have the opportunity to resist the digital-ness of the internet. When analyzing viral posts in a classroom, they can become exercises in bias identification and transformation of mindless scrolling into mindful reflection.

The Cost of Not Thinking Critically

The example of consequences on a personal and social level for not teaching the skill of critical thinking includes public health miscommunication, political division, financial fraud, etc. We live under relentless bombardment from false investment schemes, misleading headlines, and fraudulent financial scams. Whether it is financial loss or loss of time or loss of safety, poor reasoning has a price in the currency you care about most. It is only going to become increasingly worse unless we have the skills of critical thinking and reasoning, as you become an easy target in a distracted attention economy built around miscommunication and misinformation. We can build academic resilience and civic responsibility through the process of embedding critical thinking into the curriculum, in all fields from science to media.

Conclusion

Viral-ness is not evidence of the truth, rather it is evidence of reach. As algorithms dictate what we see and emotions dictate what we share, critical thinking needs to become intuitive. It is not only about being doubtful, but it is about clarity, logic, and pause.

A society that wants to value truth rather than traffic needs to first instill in their citizens how to question everything, even viral things. Because without critical thinking, virality is simply another form of blindness.

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