Critical thinking skills are the ability to imagine, analyze, and evaluate information in order to determine its integrity, importance and validity. Critical thinking is an important life skill that is necessary for a person to succeed at school, in the workplace, and while living independently. Students with this skill are more successful academically. Employers value this skill because it helps employees solve problems, logically connect ideas, evaluate arguments, and build strategies. Living independently requires decision-making, confidence and independent evaluation.

Every day our youth are bombarded with messages, information, and images from their peers, online sources, and school. It’s important we help teens to develop critical thinking skills so that they can think for themselves and know how to evaluate what they are hearing and seeing. Critical thinking allows us to develop a deeper understanding of the world and how we see ourselves in it.

Benefits of Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinking is beneficial to teens in numerous ways, such as:

• Solving complex problems in school and/or work
• Making well-informed, logical decisions
• Building relationships
• Discerning truth and becoming less likely to fall for scams
• Developing opinions about societal issues without a lot of outside influence
• Comparing and contrasting concepts
• Forming a persuasive argument
• Dealing with peer pressure
• Enhancing creativity
• Achieving goals
• Avoiding deception
• Overcoming challenges and obstacles
• Developing curiosity and resilience
• Fostering independence

How to Teach Youth to Be Critical Thinkers

Here are some ways that you can encourage critical thinking in your teen:

Be a Good Role Model. The number one way that children learn is observing their parents. Be sure you are modeling critical thinking in your own life by researching things that sound untrue and challenging statements that seem unethical or unfair. Additionally, verbalize your thinking whenever you are solving a problem or making a decision so that teens can understand your thought process.

Teach Problem Solving. An essential part of teaching youth to think critically is to teach them how to solve problems. Explain the steps as:

1. properly and clearly identify the problem
2. generate SEVERAL alternative solutions (use brainstorming to develop unique ideas)
3. develop pros, cons and expected outcomes for each of the possible solutions
4. choose one of the solutions to try
5. implement your decision and then evaluate its results

Practice Making Choices. Like everything in life, your teen will often learn through trial and error. And, part of learning to be a critical thinker involves making decisions. Make sure that your teen is making their own choices about how they want to spend their time, how they can deal with peer pressure, how to take care of their mental and physical health, how to use social media, and how to spend their money. They will likely make mistakes, but experiencing failures while still under your protection and support means that the consequences of their mistake will be small while the lesson they learn will be big.

Encourage Curiosity. As tiring as it can be to answer lots of questions, it’s important that you encourage your teen to be curious. Asking questions is the basis of critical thinking and the time you invest in answering your child’s questions—or finding the answers together— will pay off in the end. For example, train your teens to ask some probing questions about social media posts or news articles they see, such as:

• Who made this? Is this a reputable source?
• Who is the target audience?
• What is the post’s intention? Was it meant as a joke or as a formal piece of news?
• Who paid for this? Or, who gets paid if I click on this?
• Who might benefit or be harmed by this message?
• What is left out of this message that might be important?
• Is there proof that this it true beyond this one source? Are other credible sources reporting the same information?
• Headlines are often misleading because networks make money when users click on stories. If I read the whole story, does the information actually support the headline?

Hone their detective skills. Don’t lecture your teen or tell them something they have read online or heard from a friend is false. Instead, encourage them to check the information for accuracy themselves. You might suggest they use one of the numerous fact-checking sites, such as Fullfact.org or Snopes.com.

Practice evaluation. When you are spending time together, such as at the dinner table or watching TV, ask your teen to give you two opposing perspectives to something specific, such as a current event, controversial topic or show you just watched. The idea is to push them to see the same set of facts from at least two different viewpoints. These exercises can be fun and will certainly help your teen develop their skills in evaluating information.

Final Thoughts…

Developing a critical mindset is one of the most important life skills you can impart to your kids. They need these skills in order to thrive and survive, especially in today’s society. These skills will help them make better decisions, form healthy relationships, and determine what they value and believe. It will also give them an advantage in the workplace. Ultimately, learning to think for themselves will make them a better person for our world.