Today's world is unimaginable without the mass communication media. The media constantly expand and influence people and their upbringing. The mass media are another agent of socialization that adapt to social changes. The media have an ambivalent role in the modern educational paradigm because from one standpoint they are educational and informative, whilst on the other hand they can be manipulative. In the modern society, each new generation of children grows up in an environment that is increasingly rich in the new media and its contents. Accordingly, the potential impact of the media on children or the perception of that impact changes. It can be said that these days the media, alongside school and family, have become the most important educational environments. This research will explain how television and its content, i.e. the manipulative power of advertisements, affects children and young people. In addition to the concepts of media, television, internet, cartoons, etc., it will also be mentioned how to act when exposing children to the media, and it will show several examples of alternative entertainment for children that can replace the hours spent using different types of media.