Olivia Terragni : 28 October 2025 15:00
We often try to explain the hybrid, simultaneous, and contradictory world in which young people live in perpetual connection, but the truth is that as adults, we struggle to understand it. We often wonder how to protect them , less so how to equip them .
In short, we’re talking about empowerment , the process that enables them to act autonomously and responsibly, even in the non-linear digital world where they spend most of their lives, between an “online self” and an “offline self.” It’s not just about providing them with technological skills, but above all about developing critical awareness , the ability to actively participate, and resilience, enabling them to manage complex situations, make informed decisions, and contribute positively to society.
Let’s pause for a moment on the word “complexity” : often, those who argue that some things are too complicated to understand are those who prefer everything to remain that way, unquestioned, because things often seem designed not to be understood—in short, a mechanism of power, an informational battlefield that young people navigate, a cyberspace designed to capture their attention. In reality, young people are perfectly capable of learning to distinguish the signal from the noise .
Thus, in a world built on misinformation, young people, hyper-connected yet alone, pioneers of an uncharted territory in constant experimentation, neither love war nor aspire to heroic roles. They are interested in issues like climate change, social rights, and sustainability, but still feel they matter little. Yet they are the ones who master new technologies, with a creativity that is perhaps their greatest innovation. Then one day Nicola Bellotti arrives and, in large letters, lets them know: ‘YOU ARE WORTH IT’, your voice matters, your perspectives are valuable, your choices carry weight, great things await you . So we decided to tell the story of this new adventure.
IN SHORT:
Nicola Bellotti is an entrepreneur with a multidisciplinary background: a pioneer in digital marketing, he is a digital industry specialist, developing communication strategies for companies, brands, and public figures, focusing on building their reputations. A law graduate, Nicola began developing the first informational websites in the 1990s, later founding Blacklemon, one of the first Italian agencies specializing in digital marketing, where he now focuses on communication strategies, brand reputation, and political consulting.
Over the years, he has held various institutional roles, including membership on the General Council of Assolombarda and the Confindustria Small Industry Committee, as well as being a member of the Media, Communications, and Entertainment group of Assolombarda and the Council of Confesercenti in Piacenza. In 2002, he collaborated with the Minister for Innovation and Technology, contributing to the drafting of the “White Paper on Accessibility” and the Ministerial Decree “PC for Young People.” Also active in the field of sustainability, in 2021 he co-founded NeaGea, a benefit corporation created with Paolo Mazzoni to support companies in pursuing strategic innovation, with the aim of maximizing their positive impact on the environment, people, and communities. Previously.
His entrepreneurial activity has not been limited to digital, but has touched various sectors with a “enter, innovate and sell” model: in 2012, he founded Melaggiusti, a company specialized in the repair of Apple and Samsung devices, sold to an investment fund in 2016, in 2014 he founded Salus Naturalis, a company producing natural medicines, later merged into Toccasana and sold to an entrepreneurial group in 2018. He has also held courses on social media and inbound marketing for various educational institutions and collaborated with the Master in International Communication at the University of Milan (Madec) and is also a good writer: he has published two novels: I Custodi delle Rune (2007) and Mocambo (2024).
Nicola is also a visionary with great faith in younger generations as bearers of new ideas, innovation, and change. They are torn between the need to improve society and develop crucial skills for the workforce, in a world governed by “NO,” trapped by a bureaucracy that traps ideas instead of liberating them. This is where “the uniquely Italian ability to transform obstacles into opportunities, limitations into incentives,” which he knows very well, comes from. While the United States and China exert great power over information, and disinformation orchestrated by Russia and China intensifies—including through bots and fake social media accounts—Europe has remained in a more passive position, that of an observer, today risking becoming merely a regulatory body increasingly geopolitically isolated. Meanwhile, Nicola has decided to stand up, investing in the education of a generation more aware of its own strengths and identities, capable of recognizing and countering disinformation and digital manipulation. This is where “You Are Worth” comes into being, a completely free initiative aimed at young people, which takes place over an initial series of five meetings aimed at supporting and valuing young people, so that they become aware of their own strengths and capable of positively impacting the present and future.
NICOLA: I’ve never had a mentor in my professional life, and in many difficult moments I’ve felt a deep longing for someone who had already overcome certain obstacles. This lack of support fuels my main drive: I’d like to be a small help to these kids, a point of reference, a source of sincere encouragement.
Also because—let’s face it— young people have been a group that has been mistreated for millennia . I’ll give you an example: “Our youth love luxury, are rude, mock authority, have no respect for their elders. Today’s children are tyrants, they don’t get up when an old man enters a room, they talk back to their parents. In a word, they are evil.” Sounds relevant, doesn’t it? And yet Socrates said so in 470 BC . Young people, as the embodiment of the future and change, have always been feared . And the first reaction of the adult world is often to contain them, to reduce them to the role of mere spectators. I, on the other hand, would like to help them discover something more : about the great opportunities that await them, but above all about themselves.
NICOLA: I believe that each generation develops its own antibodies in response to the challenges of the times in which it lives.
I have great faith in the potential of young people : what may seem like a threat to us adults can become an opportunity for them to invent something that doesn’t yet exist. When I was a kid, I spent too much time in front of video games and comics. Yet, video games sparked my passion for computer science applied to creativity, and comics sparked my curiosity for cultures far removed from my own. Essentially, the concerns my parents had forged the profession I practice today and the company I’ve built. The theme of self-perception has always been crucial during adolescence.
Every generation has faced the need for self-determination. What I find particularly difficult today is the weight of social media numbers: likes, views, followers. In my day, I knew I wasn’t an Adonis, but I didn’t have a daily counter to remind me. Today, numbers can become cages : they offer false validation and push adolescents—naturally seeking recognition and belonging—into behaviors they risk regretting, just to get a few more likes and feel seen. I wish the “You, Vali” meetings were a lever of empowerment , a pat on the back.
NICOLA: That’s a really complex question. When a child is born, no one hands you an instruction manual . You try to draw inspiration from your own experience as a child, you force yourself to improve what can be improved, you prepare with a thousand good intentions and mental frameworks… and then you discover that every child is different from how you imagined. Adolescence arrives like a runaway train, and you can only try your best to stay afloat. Speaking to so many people every day, I realize that almost no one truly understands the complexity of social media and digital platforms that are now part of our children’s daily lives .
Exercising control without knowledge is extremely difficult : it’s wrong to overdo restrictions, but it’s also wrong to grant too much freedom. Faced with phenomena like cyberbullying, hate speech, digital predators, and online crime, we need more education . We need to know, understand, and delve deeper. This is the only real tool a parent has to spot the signs that something is wrong and intervene before it’s too late.
NICOLA: Let’s start with a fundamental fact: today, control of most platforms where mass communication takes place is concentrated in the hands of a handful of companies, almost all of them American or Chinese . It’s extremely difficult for other players to establish themselves as real alternatives in the short term. Within these platforms (I’m thinking of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn), the availability of enormous amounts of data has allowed the construction of extremely precise profiles on each of us: habits, interests, fears, inclinations. And we have conveniently allowed ourselves to be profiled . Thus, we have progressively delegated an increasing number of decisions to algorithms: from suggesting the next movie on Netflix to passively watching reels that run for hours, replacing books, newspapers, even conversations at the bar.
The problem is that these algorithms not only simplify our choices, but also risk hardening our prejudices. They increasingly show us content that confirms what we already think, giving us the illusion that the world thinks like us . This kills dialogue, the ability to synthesize, and authentic political debate.
Young people, unlike us, haven’t experienced a world “before social media.” They don’t know what it meant to stay informed by reading a newspaper or listening to different opinions. Today, practically no one under 65 regularly reads a newspaper. This is an epochal change . If boomers often can’t distinguish real news from fake news and Generation X has become polarized, most young people have lost interest in ideas . Not only do they participate less in public debate, they often don’t even vote anymore.
Activists themselves, though driven by passion, remain trapped in the same algorithmic logic : they see only what confirms their beliefs. They are prisoners of a bubble. Here too, the only weapon people have against digital manipulation is knowledge, curiosity, and in-depth analysis. I am convinced that every teenager, regardless of their political orientation, must by nature want to change the world, question what they find, and strongly desire change. Today, however, I see a generation that is often submissive, hypnotized, and distrustful . But, despite everything, I continue to have much more faith in them than they have in themselves.
NICOLA: Communication has played a decisive role in the evolution of humanity compared to all other animal species. As Stephen Hawking pointed out, the greatest achievements of our civilization have been achieved through speech. Technology can amplify this ability: it can help us communicate more, understand each other better, build bridges between people and different cultures. However, it becomes dangerous when it replaces authentic dialogue between human beings.
Studying the mechanisms of communication (advertising, political, social, or institutional) means learning to decipher the world we live in . Strategic communication accustoms you to thinking two or three moves ahead, like in a game of chess. It trains you to read a news story and reconstruct, backwards, the possible moves that led to that result, within a precise and circumscribed scenario.
In this sense, communication is an extraordinary key to understanding : it teaches you to interpret reality, to understand geopolitics… which, ultimately, is the underlying plot on which everything that happens moves.
NICOLA: I don’t want to be misunderstood, so I’ll make two points first.
First, I am a convinced European. I believe that the friendship built between the peoples of Europe has guaranteed us decades of peace, prosperity, and a common culture founded on essential values.
The second: I am equally convinced that the The changes brought about by Artificial Intelligence will be more profound and disruptive than those brought about by the Industrial Revolution between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We are facing an epochal transformation, and Europe, unfortunately, is not ready to face it.
In the digital world, European decision-makers have often proven unprepared, clumsy, and incapable of foreseeing the practical consequences of their choices. The rules introduced by the European Union too often penalize those who act transparently (individuals, companies, and professionals), undermining their economic sustainability. They also fail to counteract those who operate behind the scenes, often from abroad, in unfair or manipulative ways.
There are at least four clear examples :
While the United States, China, and India race, experiment, and invest in the future, we Europeans continue to ban, block, regulate, and standardize … sacrificing the future of our young people on the altar of ideologies—and electoral interests. And that’s precisely why it should be them, the young people, who take to the barricades.
NICOLA: As I said before, decision-makers in Brussels have often demonstrated their inability to foresee the obvious. For years, everyone working in our sector has been warning people against recklessly sharing their data or documents online. Yet, today, there are plans to introduce systems that would require users, even just to access an adult website, to provide their ID or submit to a face and voice scan to verify their age.
All this is happening at a time when, with tools like HeyGen , even a child can create a digital avatar in just a few minutes that perfectly mimics anyone’s voice and likeness. So-called “deepfakes” are becoming indistinguishable from the real thing , and will be completely so in a few months. It’s paradoxical: while technology is placing us at ever-increasing risk of manipulation and identity theft, Europe is proposing solutions that increase the amount of sensitive data in circulation, rather than protecting it .
NICOLA: I’m not an education expert, and I don’t claim to have a solution. I’ll simply note that, unfortunately, the Italian school system is obsolete, self-referential, and profoundly unhappy. Only 26% of girls and 17% of boys say they’re happy going to school, compared to a European average of 56%. This is a dramatic figure .
According to research by the WHO and OECD, 90% of 15-year-old girls and 92% of 15-year-old boys dislike school. It may seem obvious—”kids don’t like studying”—but in reality, this is a uniquely Italian problem. Italian students suffer from anxiety more than their peers in other countries with similar lifestyles. Our school system seems designed for teachers and administrative staff, not for those who should be its true protagonists: the students. In other contexts, faced with a crisis of this magnitude, urgent action would be needed . I would start here: with a serious and profound reform of the school system , one that truly puts our children’s future ahead of any other rationale. If we can find funds for rearmament, perhaps we could allocate at least part of it to a more strategic and civic investment: education.
NICOLA: The key to everything is curiosity. We’re experiencing a radical shift in the way we work: artificial intelligence, global connectivity, thinking machines, and new media are driving a transformation that will reshape entire professions and create new ones that are still unthinkable today. In this scenario, those who remain more curious than average will be able to “surf” the crest of the wave .
Curiosity is what drives us to learn, understand, delve deeper, experiment, and ultimately succeed. The future will require the ability to tackle complex problems that span diverse disciplines and to cultivate skills that no machine can easily replicate: understanding the profound meaning of what is being communicated, grasping emotional nuances, and creating authentic connections with others. The more machines become more important, the more valuable the human side of things will become: empathy, spirituality, the ability to inspire and interact authentically. But curiosity alone is not enough. It must be accompanied by open-mindedness, critical thinking, interpersonal skills, and, above all, tenacity. Because in the end—always— tenacity trumps talent .
NICOLA: I can’t call myself a writer. I love reading, and I believe true writers are others. The only thing I’ve written that I’m truly proud of is Mocambo, because between the lines of those thirteen stories, I find myself completely: the experiences that have shaped me, the emotions I continue to feel, but also my fragilities, my contradictions, the internal struggles that have always haunted me.
The part of my job that I’m most passionate about is branding, identity, and positioning, and developing strategies that allow people and companies to manage their reputations. These are the most complex and, at the same time, the most stimulating challenges.
Every project is a universe unto itself , and for this reason it’s difficult to generalize or give valid advice for all young people entering this world. However, when young people ask me for advice—it happens every now and then, at the end of training sessions—I prefer to respond by playing the words of the final monologue from the film “The Big Kahuna.”
The monologue ends with this: “ Be careful about taking advice, but be patient with those who dispense it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past out of oblivion, cleaning it up, painting over the uglier parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth .” I believe this sentence contains all the wisdom and humility with which we should view experience, both our own and that of others.
NICOLA: That’s a really tough question, Olivia. I’m a devourer of science fiction books and films, and I think almost every possible scenario has already been imagined in that genre. What I’ve learned from comics —and what I find profoundly true— is that with great power comes great responsibility .
Today we stand on the very brink of this transition: we are about to unleash an immense power, capable of radically changing the rules of the game . This is why I believe we need a new, collective responsibility, one that leads us to rethink our paradigms. We must have the courage to set aside outdated concepts—such as the divisions between left and right in politics , to cite a deliberately provocative example—and learn to recognize ourselves, finally, as one people: humans, or earthlings, if you prefer to return to science fiction. A people who, very soon, will have to learn to coexist with another form of intelligence, different from our own but capable of existing just as real and tangible.
Olivia Terragni