This column addresses the importance of developing critical thinking to meet the demands of 21st-century literacies and participatory democracy. The author argues for a critical approach to digital literacies that explores the sociological nature of literacy practices. Students examine examples of new literacies and analyze how ideologies are represented in multimodal texts. Then students use critical understandings of how these texts work in the world to create their own multimodal texts that can act as counter narratives pushing back against mainstream ideologies that exclude diverse perspectives.