Critical thinking is not enough. Students need new fluencies

When Chinese factory influencers began posting on platforms like TikTok, claiming to be the original manufacturers behind luxury brands such as Chanel and Lululemon, it was more than viral curiosity – it was a signal of a shifting civic landscape.

With a smartphone in hand and a backdrop of high-end handbags, these influencers invited viewers to bypass global supply chains and buy “direct from the source”. Their videos, though casually filmed, pierced the carefully maintained illusion of exclusivity that underpins the luxury fashion industry.

This phenomenon highlights more than marketing disruption – it signals a deeper transformation in how people engage with power, authenticity and collective rights in the digital age. These short-form videos operate as forms of soft protest, revealing the hidden labour behind prestige while reimagining economic and civic agency. What was once the domain of press conferences and mass media is now a dynamic, decentralised space where TikTok users become political actors and social critics.

Amid escalating United States-China trade tensions, soaring tariffs and intensifying AI rivalry, social media has evolved into a cultural and geopolitical force. It no longer functions simply as a site for entertainment, but as a global arena where diplomacy, dissent and identity play out in real time – frame by frame, scroll by scroll.

We are entering the era of networked citizenship, where civic life unfolds through hashtags, likes and livestreams. In this digitally saturated world, the boundaries between consumer, citizen and activist are increasingly blurred. As platforms like TikTok reconfigure how influence circulates, they compel us to rethink not just how we communicate, but what participation, agency and public space mean in the 21st century.

Epistemological shift

Social media platforms were not originally built to shape geopolitics or disrupt global commerce. They emerged as tools for personal connection – spaces to share photos, update statuses and maintain social networks. In their early stages, they were seen as relatively apolitical extensions of social life.

However, the platforms quickly evolved in ways their creators did not anticipate. As venture capital, advertising infrastructure and the attention economy took hold, social media shifted from facilitating connection to engineering behaviour. What began as digital commons are now complex systems optimised to influence not just what users see, but how they think, feel and respond.

This transformation marks more than a media evolution; it reflects a shift in epistemology. Platforms like TikTok exemplify this change. With its rapid-fire loops, emotionally charged content and intimate aesthetics, TikTok has become a global venue for redefining authenticity, trust and value. It is not unusual for a livestream – featuring an individual claiming to sell luxury goods from a Chinese warehouse – to attract millions of views, regardless of whether the claims are verifiable.

In this new landscape, truth is often secondary to perception. Visibility, not accuracy, becomes the metric of influence. The question of whether influencers are real factory suppliers is often overshadowed by how convincingly they perform the role. As a result, social media has enabled a form of algorithmic populism, where the power to shape narratives around commerce, identity and dissent is now accessible to anyone with a smartphone and a signal.

What emerges is a decentralisation of cultural authority. Power no longer resides solely in institutions, brands or governments; it now circulates through the algorithmic logic of the scroll.

Crisis of trust

Luxury brands such as Chanel, Lululemon and Louis Vuitton have long represented more than consumer goods. They serve as powerful symbols of cultural capital, signifying aspiration, exclusivity and social distinction. Their value is as much about perception as it is about product.

The recent wave of viral videos has challenged that perception. While the authenticity of the claims may be difficult to verify, their impact is clear: they disrupt the tightly controlled narratives that luxury brands depend on. These brands are not just selling craftsmanship – they are selling secrecy, scarcity and myth.

Most operate with highly managed supply chains and curated public images. Yet even a single video filmed on a factory floor can erode decades of brand management. In doing so, these videos expose the fragility of symbolic value in a digital environment where control over narrative is increasingly decentralised.

More broadly, these moments reflect a growing crisis of trust – one that extends beyond the fashion industry. As users question the legitimacy of brands, platforms and institutions, a larger uncertainty emerges: who defines value in an age where anyone can publish, disrupt or expose? When virality rivals verification, and aesthetic persuasion outweighs institutional authority, the dynamics of reputation and power are being rewritten in real time.

Digital activism is changing

From the Arab Spring to the global rise of #BlackLivesMatter, social media has become a central vehicle for political expression and resistance. It has amplified dissent, mobilised movements and given voice to communities who have historically been excluded from mainstream platforms. Yet, the nature of digital activism is changing.

Today’s movements are often fragmented and visually driven and are embedded within the same platforms they seek to challenge.

The recent TikTok trend spotlighting global supply chains illustrates this evolution. What emerges is a form of economic micro-activism – actions defined less by organised protest than by consumer choices, viral content and algorithmic visibility. Resistance is increasingly informal, decentralised and shaped by digital momentum rather than clear ideological frameworks.

However, this mode of activism also reveals inherent tensions. While social media enables new forms of civic engagement, it simultaneously commercialises them. Platforms profit from engagement, regardless of whether that engagement stems from protest or entertainment. Influencers who appear to subvert corporate power are still operating within systems optimised for monetisation and scale.

Nonetheless, these acts carry cultural and political weight. They reflect a blurring of boundaries – between consumption and citizenship, between personal expression and public advocacy. In a media environment where scrolling often replaces marching, the line between shopping and resistance is no longer clearly defined.

A new kind of literacy

Today’s students are coming of age in a world where digital platforms do more than disseminate information – they actively shape how knowledge is produced, validated and experienced. This represents a significant shift in epistemology, as authority is increasingly negotiated through networks rather than anchored in traditional institutions.

What is emerging is not a distant future, but a present condition: the augmented mind, a way of thinking formed through continuous interaction with algorithmic systems, collaborative filters and the participatory structures of digital platforms.

In this environment, truth is aesthetic, economics is performative and citizenship is deeply entangled with algorithms and attention systems. For higher education, the implications are urgent and far-reaching.

It is no longer sufficient to teach students how to construct arguments or write persuasive essays. Today’s learners must also be equipped to critically interpret platform dynamics, navigate algorithmic influence and exercise discernment within systems designed to shape perception, compress complexity and commodify attention.

This calls for a new kind of literacy – network literacy – not just as a technical competency but as a civic and ethical imperative. Students must understand how digital environments condition what they know, how they feel and what they believe to be real. Literacy in this context means fluency in discernment, not just data.

We are witnessing the rise of what might be called networked citizenship – a paradigm in which individuals are not merely participants in civic life but co-creators of meaning and influence within emotion-driven, data-saturated systems. Digital platforms now shape not only how we shop, but how we empathise, mobilise and resist, fundamentally redefining the terrain of public engagement.

The role of universities is not to shield students from these realities but to prepare them to engage with them critically, ethically and imaginatively. This demands rethinking the curriculum to include digital ethics, platform politics and algorithmic awareness as foundational elements of citizenship education.

The goal is not disconnection from digital life, but its humanisation – embedding reflection, responsibility and civic intention into how we educate students for participation in an augmented world.

If universities are to remain relevant civic institutions in the digital age, they must take responsibility not only for advancing knowledge but for shaping the ethical, political and technological fluencies that global citizens now require.

Expanded civic education

What unfolds on platforms like TikTok is not merely a cultural phenomenon – it represents a civic shift. Social media has become a primary arena where identity, legitimacy and dissent are negotiated in real time. Participation no longer depends on institutional access but on visibility, emotional resonance and digital fluency.

For higher education, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Universities must expand their conception of civic education to reflect the realities of networked citizenship – a form of engagement shaped by digital infrastructures, algorithmic curation and performative visibility. This means preparing students not just to think critically, but to act ethically and intentionally within digitally mediated public life.

In the age of the augmented mind, where cognition is distributed across devices, feeds and filters, education itself must become augmented. The health of democratic life may depend not just on whether students learn how to speak, but on whether they learn how to be heard with integrity in the systems they now inhabit.

James Yoonil Auh is the chair of computing and communications engineering at KyungHee Cyber University in South Korea.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.