With all the information available to us online these days, it can be hard to tell what's true and what isn't. You might see articles showing you shocking facts about some celebrity or a health study that's telling you that eating grass will make you live longer. It can be really easy to believe everything you read, but you should always try to be a critical thinker in your reading. Here's how!

- Shocking statistics are rarely as important as they may seem. If you see an article telling you that 93.45095% of people who wear the colour grey are more likely to get into a car accident (or something else crazy like that!), take a step back and think about those numbers. These statistics usually come from a sample, which doesn't always reflect the population. They could have tweaked their graphs so that a small difference suddenly seems gigantic.

- Beware of opinions when you're talking about facts. A fact is something you can't deny: water is wet, the sun rises in the east. An opinion is just how someone feels about something: coffee tastes good, the colour blue is bad. Especially in places like blogs, you need to make sure you can tell the difference between facts and opinions - they can often sound similar. Internalize the facts, and create an opinion for yourself.

- Trustworthy sources are important to find. Someplace like Wikipedia has a lot of information, but any user can go in anytime and change it all. Again, blogs and some websites don't always have accurate information. You can usually trust certified websites, organizations, newspapers, and professionals, but you should always double-check what you hear somewhere else, just to make sure.

Are you a critical thinker?

Til next time!

Kat ♥