If you have a teenager, you’ve probably noticed that they spend more than a little time on YouTube. And it’s not all cute kittens and Tide pod challenges. Many kids have a more-than-passing familiarity with one of YouTube’s most prolific video subcultures: conspiracy theories.

No, most teens aren’t listening to the growly voiced lizard-people tirades of Alex Jones. Nor are they watching Sandy Hook hoax videos—because those are just too grim. But most teens are familiar with internet celebrity Shane Dawson, who rose to superfame with comedy sketch videos and now regularly tops the charts on YouTube with his series of conspiracy theory documentaries.

Shane Dawson ponders a conspiracy

Many adults have never heard of Shane Dawson, despite his hundreds of millions of views and endless stream of viral videos. I first learned about Dawson when talking to a friend who teaches science at an elite all-girls private school. He took an informal poll of a group of high school students to size up a few conspiracy theories. “The moon landing is a fake” was soundly voted down. But the students responded more credulously to several other conspiracy theories popularized by Dawson. For example, most of the teens believed that Chuck E. Cheese’s serves leftover pizza to new patrons. Half thought that 9/11 was at least partly a government operation. Nearly a third thought the wildfires in California were triggered by space-based lasers targeting people’s homes. All of the conspiracy believers cited Dawson’s convincing analysis as the main factor in their belief.

Of course, this poll isn’t scientifically accurate, and teens are free—as we all are—to believe a foolish idea and then reevaluate it in the cold hard light of more facts (or just after watching another YouTube video). Their opinion might be deeply held, or it might just be a passing impression about a subject that doesn’t really affect their lives. But one thing is clear: The advice of parents and educators isn’t making much of a difference when it comes to kids accepting utter nonsense.

This is a problem that stretches far beyond the world of goofy YouTube videos. That’s because a child is pitted against propaganda every time they open a magazine, enter a shopping mall, or listen to the advice of a lifestyle guru, singer, or teen actress. Uncritical acceptance of the people we trust makes us easy prey for manipulation.

Code literacy, math skills, and creative problem solving are key skills for developing minds. But is there anything more important than making sure our kids aren’t exploited by scammers and frauds?

The wrong way to teach kids to think

Often, we assume critical thinking is about training kids to think logically and spot tiny flaws in reasoning. We hold up examples of bad arguments, poke them full of holes, and hope this helps kids learn to do the same with the misinformation that bombards them.

Life is rarely that easy, though, and teaching critical thinking is not as simple as it seems. Every time we start telling a child what or how to think, we are implicitly telling them to lower their defenses and accept what we believe. After all, parents and teachers often depend on a child’s uncritical acceptance just to get them to change their socks in the morning and brush their teeth at night.

Another, more subtle challenge is that theories, propaganda, and bad advice all have their own set of “facts.” Conspiracy theories thrive on logical thinking turned loose on tiny details that are taken out of context or just plain wrong. For example, flat-Earthers (people who believe the planet is flat) pick up on the fact that people never cross the poles—except they do. Similarly, 9/11 conspiracy theorists seize upon the detail that the fire of a burning plane isn’t enough to melt steel (certainly true) and ignore the fact that you don’t need to melt metal to severely compromise its strength, as any blacksmith can show you.

Adults—especially scientifically trained people—can often spot bad arguments and irrelevant details right away. But not always. Sometimes it’s a bit like watching an expert magician; you know their trick is sleight of hand, not multidimensional magic, but you still can’t pinpoint how it’s done.

Critical thinking is a survival skill

Critical thinking isn’t about defeating every bad argument with logical wizardry. It’s about establishing survival skills that can help you smell out arguments that seem suspicious. Just as a sniff of sour meat warns you that a sandwich might not make a good meal, critical thinking helps you recognize ideas that are probably going to give you indigestion.

What are the red flags that tell us something is off? Here are two of the most important, which are good starting points for parents and teachers.

1. Arguments should be about ideas, not people

This is the most important principle—not just for separating good ideas from sloppy thinking, but also to help us all live together in a reasonably functional society.

When an arguer starts to insult, demean, or attack an opponent, it’s often a sign that their argument is on weak ground. It doesn’t matter if someone is older or younger, rich or poor, smells bad or looks different. Critical thinking lives and dies by arguments, not insults.

Perhaps nothing in recent history demonstrated this better than the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting. Regardless of your opinions on school safety or gun control, it’s impossible not to notice the dozens of commentators who tried to discredit the opinions of the survivors simply because they were young. Among the many insults were gems like these: “They do not possess any semblance of wisdom because they have not lived those years.” They “can’t support themselves.” They “are in no position to change the world when they can’t even remember to change their own bedsheets.” And they are too immature to carry firearms and thus “too immature to make policy about firearms.”

This is a particularly good example to drive the point home. Every teen has been told, at some point, that their opinion is invalidated by their age. We call this sleazy trick an ad hominem attack, and the argument that older people have wiser thoughts is a variation of the appeal to authority fallacy. Either way, it’s an attempt to win an argument by avoiding its ideas.

2. First wait, then investigate

Bad arguments and lies are often decorated with little facts that sound compelling. Are the facts made up? Is the reasoning wrong? You won’t know—at least not at first. When a wild idea crops up, you need to be comfortable wondering “is this right?” Don’t fall into the trap of making an immediate decision based on what you expect is true or what you want to believe.

In this interval of uncertainty, it helps to think of as many possibilities and counterexplanations as possible. What else could explain the facts? Does the alternate explanation create more inconsistencies?

No one deserves unconditional trust — even if they’re at the top of the YouTube trending list.

The simplest explanations are often the best. Many conspiracy theories raise questions (easy) but don’t provide alternatives (more difficult). For example, in the world of 9/11 conspiracy theorists, there are hundreds of different alternative explanations for the infamous terrorist attacks. Most of these explanations create more complications than they solve; for example, forcing us to wonder how a complex plot involving hundreds of people could run with perfect efficiency and no leaks is a feat no U.S. administration has ever accomplished on any task.

When investigating, it also helps to seek out other sources of information. Yes, anyone can be wrong. If an organization is consistently right, though, it’s worth checking out what they have to say about new information. For example, if you come across dramatic claims on social media, like the recent Momo Challenge, it certainly doesn’t hurt to take a quick look for the topic on the hoax-debunking site Snopes.