In a joint blog post, ARTICLE 19 and Think-Film Impact Production (TFIP), reflect on our mutual concerns around information integrity, freedom of expression online and the radicalisation of youth in particular, inspired by the Venice Film Festival award-winning feature film The Quiet Son. The timing is apt considering recent and upcoming regulatory and policy interventions from the European Commission to better protect and empower people online such as the recent public consultation on the protection of minors as part of the implementation of the Digital Services Act and ongoing inputs for a future Digital Fairness Act.
On June 20th 2025, the European Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council is expected to approve conclusions on protecting the mental health of youth in the digital era. However, unless mental health is considered alongside media literacy and the right to accurate information, these conclusions risk becoming yet another missed opportunity in the fight against online harms, disinformation, and the erosion of young people’s ability to critically engage with the digital world.
A new European feature film, The Quiet Son, starring veteran French actor Vincent Lindon, shows powerfully what’s at stake in these policy and regulatory conversations. This compelling story portrays a father’s helplessness in the face of his son’s radicalisation. The father witnesses the harm happening in real time but lacks the necessary tools to meaningfully intervene as his impressionable teenage boy is progressively manipulated by extremist rhetoric online and offline.
The story reflects a wider reality across Europe where people are navigating digital spaces increasingly shaped by manipulative content, opaque algorithms, and a lack of accountability in how information is curated and delivered.
This is not merely a story of individual or demographic vulnerability of youth – it is a structural failure of digital governance. Radicalisation thrives where users lack the tools to assess what they see, where harmful content is promoted over reliable sources, and where expression is stifled by both censorship and toxicity. This film is a timely cultural intervention that puts a human face on the consequences of unchecked digital harms.
With the Council meeting due to take place on Friday, this film provides a powerful reminder of what is at stake, and the consequences of inaction by the EU. The discussions are part of a broader package of regulatory and policy interventions that are being considered in the EU. A public consultation on the protection of minors under the Digital Services Act closed just last week and the upcoming Digital Fairness Act which, inter alia, aims to protect consumers from dark online patterns, influencer marketing, and addictive algorithm design is currently being drafted by the Commission’s DG for Justice and Consumers. ARTICLE 19 believes that the EU must place information integrity, freedom of expression, and media literacy at the heart of upcoming digital reforms. The Quiet Son is a powerful reminder of the real lives who are affected when regulatory protections are not in place.
Move beyond safety and towards user empowerment
Protection from online harms must not come at the expense of fundamental rights. While freedom of expression must be upheld, content moderation grounded in human rights may require restrictions on illegal speech that incites discrimination, hostility, or violence. Thus, digital frameworks must move beyond narrow notions of ‘safety’ (e.g. reactive content removal, overbroad censorship, or platform-driven controls that lack transparency) to focus on information empowerment that prioritises access to information, transparency in content moderation and recommender systems, and robust media literacy initiatives, especially for youth and their parents. We must be equipped not only to recognise harmful content, but to question, debate, and speak out.
Mental health in the digital era cannot be separated from the quality of the information environments we inhabit. A policy response that fails to confront disinformation and radicalising content will remain reactive and incomplete.
The Quiet Son is a cultural warning of what happens when information systems go unregulated and individuals are left without the tools to critically engage. The EU must heed this message – not only to support individual mental health, but to defend the democratic values that are increasingly tested in the digital space.