Common Sense Media: Critical Ignoring - What's Worth Your Attention?
We live in a world saturated with content—posts, videos, headlines, threads, notifications—all competing for a resource that cannot be stretched: your attention. Knowing what to engage with is a skill, but so is knowing what to ignore. In this lesson, students are introduced to critical ignoring, a deliberate strategy for managing attention in an information-rich world. They examine real posts across four platforms to identify the features that pull them in or signal they should move on, then trace those features back to the platforms and creators that put them there.
Objectives
- Define critical ignoring and distinguish it from information avoidance
- Identify features of content that signal whether it is worth engaging with or ignoring
- Analyze how platforms and content creators use engagement strategies to benefit from your attention
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We live in a world saturated with content—posts, videos, headlines, threads, notifications—all competing for a resource that cannot be stretched: your attention. Knowing what to engage with is a skill, but so is knowing what to ignore. In this lesson, students are introduced to critical ignoring, a deliberate strategy for managing attention in an information-rich world. They examine real posts across four platforms to identify the features that pull them in or signal they should move on, then trace those features back to the platforms and creators that put them there.
Objectives
- Define critical ignoring and distinguish it from information avoidance
- Identify features of content that signal whether it is worth engaging with or ignoring
- Analyze how platforms and content creators use engagement strategies to benefit from your attention