alt Hacker News>> Social media runs rampant with a form of skepticism, but I would call that closer to paranoia than critical thinking
For my generation this was always refered to as a "healthy skepticism", but lately I've noticed many don't necessarily see this as a good trait - an example: any sort of measured, full-picture response to the impact of AI on software development.
As usual, it's a spectrum. The pettiest example is one of Reddit, where you see some random cat video, and the comments all go "this is fake" or "this is posted by a bot" or "how could you do that, you're torturing the cat!".
1. They may all be true, but yiy gotta pick your battles at this point. If you think all of reddit is bots, what use is there complaining in every post
2. Healthy skepticism is supported by observation and findings. The internet as of late has grown lazy on that overall and people just throw out accusations without explanation. That definitely comes more off as paranoia at best, or bad faith at worst.