How do AI and social media affect critical thinking?

It seems unlikely to imagine our society living its routines without the use of the numerous digital resources we currently have, of which we can highlight artificial intelligence (AI) and social networks. Whether for professional or leisure purposes, these technologies are present in several tasks of our day to day (which, no matter how many undeniable benefits they bring, are also negatively impacting people's critical sense. A worrying effect that can generate even greater consequences if not properly understood and combated.

Both resources are strongly present in our country. In 2024, as an example, data from Datareportal identified that Brazil had 144 million active users in social networks, representing 66.3% of the total population. As for the use of AI, the scenario could not be different: three out of four Brazilians use this technology at work, according to a survey by Opsos and Google ., considered as crucial to deal with complex information and find innovative solutions to business challenges.

Not all technology, however, has only advantages. Even though widely used by society, AI, as an example, presents a huge challenge of expansion in what matches its energy consumption. It is estimated that it is necessary to use more than 10 times energy for an AI research compared to traditional search engines.In social networks, the obstacle is how much the dissemination and fake news, which is increasingly difficult in the context of global polarization.

Both in the medium and long term, there is a more worrying disadvantage in the excessive use of these resources, which can severely impact the focus and critical sense of people. This is because, every day, we are exposed to a flood of information (information pandemic), whose analysis and verification of this high amount ends up becoming a great challenge without the proper guidance of safe mechanisms for this.

With the focus of users gradually being impaired, this critical sense becomes increasingly difficult to apply. After all, in an increasingly instantaneous world, it is complex to separate quality time to deepen the topic and verify whether it is correct or not. Knowing, in other words, “miner” and separate the “joio wheat” with regard to the information received on a daily basis.

Going beyond this impact on superficiality in the information, many academic studies show a correlation of increased anxiety and depression due to the massive use of social networks, as well as correlation with other disorders associated with the several hours connected and plugged into a screen. This was shown by the Mental Health Panorama 2024, conducted by the Cactus Institute in partnership with AtlasIntel 45% of anxiety cases in young people aged 15 to 29 years are related to the intensive use of these platforms.

In the market, the lack of this critical sense also tends to harm innovation, which is created and invested, mainly, to solve pains and problems of society. One of the great “entradas” is the knowledge about something, however, when we do not understand this something and delegate this analysis to a technology, much is lost in the process, increasing the impact on the creation of new products, services, process and, consequently, innovation.

We are in a delicate scenario to reconcile, in a healthy and intelligent way, the use of these technologies in our daily lives, without affecting our critical sense and triggering severe impacts for the population and the entire market. And, regarding companies, the best way to avoid or mitigate these problems is to use governance models designed to analyze each of these points and provide more precise guidelines on how to use these resources in the best possible way.

One of the models that has been most outstanding in this sense is the ISO of Innovation, a newly published methodology that aims to analyze all the opportunities and threats of the market and technologies to generate innovation within organizations. It provides the best guidelines to be followed by each company, in order to achieve their goals and aspirations of competitive prominence.

There is no way to eliminate AI or social networks from our routines, which requires a high responsibility to handle them intelligently, so that they are beneficial allies instead of harmful technologies to the critical sense of the population. With this discernment and the support of robust methodologies in this regard, we will have highly effective solutions for our tasks.

Alexandre Pierro he holds a master's degree in management and engineering of innovation, a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, nuclear physics and a management specialist from PALAS, a pioneer consultancy in ISO innovation in Latin America.