lateral reading

Higher education has historically operated under a paradigm of information scarcity, positioning universities as premier institutions for curating and transmitting knowledge. The convergence of digital hyper-abundance, algorithmic curation, and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has disrupted this model, producing what educators increasingly describe as a crisis of critical thinking in higher education. The purpose of this review is to examine how information abundance, algorithmic curation, and GenAI use may influence university students’ critical thinking, and to synthesise what this evidence implies for what universities teach and how they assess. Using a critical narrative review design with thematic synthesis, the review analyses 45 verified sources (empirical studies, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, conceptual works, and policy guidance) identified through citation chaining and targeted searches; empirical GenAI studies date from November 2022 to 2026, and foundational theoretical works from 1976 onward. The synthesis is anchored in an integrative framework that combines cognitive load and dual-process theory, cognitive offloading, scaffolding theory, self-regulated learning, and epistemic cognition, with critical thinking as the principal outcome. Five themes emerged: (1) information abundance appears to shift the central cognitive challenge from retrieval to evaluation; (2) unguided GenAI use is associated with reduced cognitive engagement and, in several experiments, with weaker independent performance once AI support is removed, although guardrailed designs appear to mitigate this; (3) fluent AI output can be mistaken for validated knowledge, and AI-detection tools are unreliable and biased; (4) lateral reading, guided AI use, and process-visible assessment have promising but uneven support; and (5) workload, equity, and policy constraints limit adoption. From these themes, the review derives the Fade–Visibility Matrix, which crosses AI support structure (persistent versus fading) with assessment design (product-only versus process-visible) to yield four diagnostic states. The evidence is early and methodologically uneven, but it is most consistent with a structural rather than individual explanation. Universities should therefore teach evaluation, verification, and metacognitive regulation explicitly, design AI support to fade, and redesign assessment so that the learning process, not only the finished product, can be observed.