Need for Critical Media Literacy

It was written in the article Need for Critical Media Literacy that "we are concerned with the use and abuse of the power of the media to control masses of people, especially children, for the profit of those who own those media and their potential allies". This quote makes me wonder if the advances in technology are causing more harm then good. Do you think that our younger generations are becoming to reliant on the technology in the classroom? What can we as educators do to ensure that technology is being used both for the students and teachers benefit while ensuring that the student does not become reliant on technology for all of their needs? 

These were the questions that I posted after we read "Need for Critical Media Literacy".I think the question that I asked is a difficult one because each student will be affected by technology in a different way. One way to ensure that children are progressing along with technology but not becoming reliant on it, would be to use it sporadically. For example if a child was taking a photo class, the teacher could teach lessons both in photo shop as well as in the darkroom. As a photo concentration I can safely say that learning the workings of an enlarger and physically exposing a photos makes photoshop much easier to understand. It is important to understand why clicking a button in photoshop does what it does. By physically experiencing it in the darkroom, a student can understand the technology of photoshop much better. One of the students in our class shared the lesson that she showed in her fieldwork. She was placed in a graphic design class but the lesson that she chose to teach was on color mixing. She said that the students were perturbed at the fact that had to physically mix colors but she said that they really began to get involved in the assignment. It allowed the students to have a hands on approach so that they could better understand color mixing when using the computer. Advances in technology will be forever growing but I think as long as we remember to combine technology with physical activities, then the students will not become too reliant on technology.