Introduction: Nowadays, children are constantly exposed to modern media, which is a major factor affecting the children’s health. The exposure is only increasing while children are getting older, as older children devote more time to watching television, playing computer games and using the Internet. One could easily say they live in a computer world. In order to make the media impact on children and adolescents to the minimum, parents, as well as pedagogical workers, who are mostly children and adolescents, can supervise them. Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to investigate and present the effects modern media have on the health of children. Methods of work: The paper used the descriptive method and combined it with the systematic overview of the literature found in online databases, such as CINAHL and MEDLINE/PubMed, which were accessed using the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ljubljana platform and the bibliographic database COBISS.SI. The data collection took place from February to July 2018. Our study includes literature published between the years 2008 and 2018. Results: Our study shows that modern media are present in the lives of children early on. Many children use modern media without any supervision and sufficient knowledge about proper protection. Children learn about modern lifestyles from the media. They have a positive and negative influence on the child's and adolescent's life. They affect mental and physical health, and cause social isolation of children and adolescents. The excessive use of media is becoming an ever-increasing problem and parents and teachers have an important role in trying to help solve it. Discussion and conclusion: The use of modern media in children is a multifaceted problem that prevents children from experiencing a normal childhood and social life. Parents and teachers are to a large extent the key to reducing the use of modern media, as they are able to teach the children about the negative side-effects of excessive media use.
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