We live in a consumer society, which imposes conformism as a necessary and desirable characteristic of personality. Rare are those, both young and elderly, who follow and critically approach things, rather than blindly absorbing them. However, one of the aims of humanistic pedagogy is to develop self-actualizing personalities. It is essential for each person to develop a critical sense of consuming different contents, including the media ones. This paper emphasizes implications that television may have for developing interests of the young. Television is one of the leading factors that influence young people in the broadest sense, including their interests. This was merely an attempt to explain the influence of television on the young, development mechanisms and their periodization, as well as the link between television and interests. Our research confirms that television influences developing interests of young people and that the frequency of broadcasting particular content increases the amount of interest in that content. Furthermore, the young show a great amount of interest in television contents related to entertainment and sport. However, it is denied that interests in particular television contents reflect other interests of the young. Various matters still remain disputable, such as: critical opinion on different contents in the media, quality of television contents, passivity of the young, their interest in participating in entertainment shows, dilemmas on taking part in educational shows and using educational television contents as a motive for studying harder.
