No, not at all. I think there’s this wide perception that critical thinking skills are declining with media, but, to be honest, I don’t think that’s actually true. Each generation of people has been getting more access to education and is becoming more educated. I think it’s just more people have access to a voice and so we’re getting a lot of “uncritical” takes that we wouldn’t have seen before. I think plenty of people have always had these kinds of thoughts, but before there wasn’t necessarily a place to voice them where others could see and interact with those thoughts. I also think most booktubers and booktokers don’t necessarily set themselves up as critical pages. They’re reviewers and trendsetters, not academics or critics and that’s okay. I have plenty of uncritical thoughts about books too. If you’re looking for critical takes on books, social media is not the place to be looking for them. You would need to look at either high brow magazines (New Yorker, New York Times, etc.) or literary magazines/journals (generally I use Google scholar to find them or go through my university library). In terms of developing more critical thinking skills, honestly the thing that’s helped me the most is keeping a reading journal. I have a physical one, but also a Google doc where I record my thoughts once I finish a book. That way, I’m getting an unfiltered look at my own thoughts before I look at anyone else’s. At first, you may have trouble writing a whole lot, or putting your finger on things, but after a while you’ll notice you’re better able to gauge your own interests and pet peeves with books.
symbolicowl t1_j1uf2dq wrote
Reply to do you think that with media (booktok and booktube) we are losing critical thinking? by Organic_Rock_6974
No, not at all. I think there’s this wide perception that critical thinking skills are declining with media, but, to be honest, I don’t think that’s actually true. Each generation of people has been getting more access to education and is becoming more educated. I think it’s just more people have access to a voice and so we’re getting a lot of “uncritical” takes that we wouldn’t have seen before. I think plenty of people have always had these kinds of thoughts, but before there wasn’t necessarily a place to voice them where others could see and interact with those thoughts. I also think most booktubers and booktokers don’t necessarily set themselves up as critical pages. They’re reviewers and trendsetters, not academics or critics and that’s okay. I have plenty of uncritical thoughts about books too. If you’re looking for critical takes on books, social media is not the place to be looking for them. You would need to look at either high brow magazines (New Yorker, New York Times, etc.) or literary magazines/journals (generally I use Google scholar to find them or go through my university library). In terms of developing more critical thinking skills, honestly the thing that’s helped me the most is keeping a reading journal. I have a physical one, but also a Google doc where I record my thoughts once I finish a book. That way, I’m getting an unfiltered look at my own thoughts before I look at anyone else’s. At first, you may have trouble writing a whole lot, or putting your finger on things, but after a while you’ll notice you’re better able to gauge your own interests and pet peeves with books.