Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens

Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people’s attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. Resisting certain types of actors requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid being tempted attention-grabbing potentially harmful content. We argue digital literacy must include the competence critical ignoring—choosing what ignore where invest one’s limited attentional capacities. review three cognitive strategies for implementing ignoring: self-nudging, in which one ignores temptations removing from environments; lateral reading, vets leaving source verifying its credibility elsewhere online; do-not-feed-the-trolls heuristic, advises not reward malicious with attention. these ignoring should be part school curricula on literacy. Teaching a paradigm shift educators’ thinking, sole focus power promise paying close attention an additional emphasis ignoring. Encouraging students other users embrace empower shield themselves excesses, traps, disorders today’s economy.