Critical thinking isn't big with those in authority, including parents and entry-level job creators. They want subjugation and ease of interaction. They want their orders followed and don't have the time for questions.
Critical thinking is taught to them, but it has no place in the life of a normal young person (age 14-24 or so). Saying it's not taught is 100% false. Its simply forgotten because it has no utility if you're entering the real world. THAT is the real problem.
You make it like it's some conspiracy from "authority".
People are bad at critical thinking because most people don't have the stomach for it. It's hard. It sometimes requires you to seriously question your "identity", i.e. your affiliation with your tribe. It requires you to do research fairly, not try to do research that only agrees with you [i.e. confirmation bias].
You're the one who constantly derides "the masses", but then blames "those in authority" for the problem. Which is it?
Yeah...not buying that. Conspiracy theories have been around forever. Maybe it's helped conspiracy theories spread- but the internet is a tool- it simply allows for ALL information to spread.
More information is better than less information, period.
Again, the issue is confirmation bias. The internet has created the ability for people to construct realities around themselves such that they never HAVE to engage all the information out there. And humans being humans, that's what they do.
Where that leads is people increasingly getting silo'd into, effectively, cults. They generate communities where you're either part of the "in-group" or the "out-group", which reward blind obedience to the dogma of the in-group and shunning anyone who ever defects. Literally in these scenarios, critical thinking will get you ostracized.
I used to believe that more information SHOULD be better, but I feel that it's largely broken society.
Whether humanity can remake society successfully to come out of this is unknown, but I wouldn't lay good odds in that favor personally.
