The following is excerpted from a white paper produced for the Catherine and John MacArthur Foundation as part of their launch of a new initiative on Youth and Digital Learning. The full report can be read at http://www.projectnml.org. In this first part, we establish how the opportunities and risks posed by the new participatory culture force us to reassess media education for the 21st century. In the second installment, we will identify a framework of social skills and cultural competencies that we feel should be the foundations for this new media literacy education.