Sambidhan Prasai was not sure he was wearing the right pants to a revolution.
Did orange Lululemon shorts say Che Guevara or casual jog?
But the human tide toward the centers of power in Kathmandu was inexorable, and he was swept into it with what he had on. Generation Z had taken to the streets in Nepal, and there was no chance of him being left behind.
Why We Wrote This
Gen Zers have brought down governments because they want good governance. From around the globe, they tell us how they’re inspiring each other’s activism in a hyperconnected world.
“The air felt charged, like the whole country was holding its breath,” he says, weeks after the youth-led protests that toppled the government.
And in the moment of that national breath, the protest became something more than a generation’s grievances, larger than any of the 20-something organizers.
“The protest wasn’t just a gathering; it was a heartbeat that was loud, insistent, and unstoppable,” he adds. “People from every walk of life were there, chanting, waving flags, holding signs up with trembling hands. The slogans echoed off the old Kathmandu buildings.”
“I was exactly where I needed to be,” says the 22-year-old.
Courtesy of Sambidhan Prasai
From Nepal to Peru and from Madagascar to Morocco, Generation Z has awoken. Protests worldwide have rocked, even overthrown, governments. In the process, they have sent a clear message. Gen Zers feel their future is slipping away from them.
They are playing the game of academic achievement, but where are the well-paying jobs they were promised? Meanwhile, as they work two jobs or wake up at 3 a.m. simply to get a good seat in overcrowded university classes, social media offers a steady stream of Instagram-perfect lives – the privileged living in luxury. So Gen Z has used the internet to fight back.
The revolution has come with plentiful brushstrokes of youth, from the use of a gaming platform to organize to the ubiquitous symbol of the movement – a Jolly Roger flag taken from a popular Japanese comic. Some protesters needed their parents’ permission to participate.
Yet what is perhaps most extraordinary about the Gen Z protests worldwide, experts say, is their unprecedented interconnection. A global generation has spawned a global movement.
David Clark of Binghamton University has studied protest movements for years. This is the first time he’s seen so many protests refer to one another. With hashtags, movements are creating chain reactions.
“We’re seeing more citation – protests referring to other protests,” he says.
This is a different kind of revolution.
From video games to the streets
Nepal was a kindling spark for Fadoua Badih and her Gen Z peers in Morocco.
The sense that she needed to do something came slowly. First, there was the 2023 earthquake and its underwhelming government response; some survivors are still living in tents without access to hospitals or schools. Then came the ramp-up to the 2030 soccer World Cup, on which Morocco – a co-host – has spent about $5 billion.
“Why can you spend money on those things that we don’t need at the same moment people are living on the streets?” says the 24-year-old.
There were some small protests around the country, but nothing was gaining traction. Then Nepal happened.
“We just woke up one day and went onto TikTok and saw what was going on,” she adds. “I was like, ‘The Gen Z did it this time.’”
Ms. Badih had joined the gaming platform Discord years earlier. It allowed her to play games with her friends online. But after Nepal, the conversations in the chat boards changed. “People were like, ‘We should do it, too! It’s time. We should speak up. Have you seen what happened in Nepal?’”
Her story echoes those of others worldwide.
Youth protests in Indonesia have been on slow burn since the beginning of the year. Frustration has been aimed at various government policies, but it stems from the same root: a widespread sense of inequity across generational lines. For Nazla, a student organizer who asked that her last name not be published because of her political work, her anger grew after the government attempted to lower the age for vice president, so the son of the previous president could run. Nazla, like many others, viewed the move as an attempt to entrench a political dynasty.
She has not felt alone this year. Citing youth movements from the Philippines to Nepal, Nazla says, “Their resistance, youth resistance, gives me both a blueprint and a sense of solidarity that we are not alone demanding accountability from those in power. It’s like a rippling effect.”
The 21-year-old, who is studying political science at the University of Indonesia, has not taken to the streets, primarily because her mother will not let her due to concerns about her health. But that does not mean she is not involved. During the protests, she helped design posts and digital campaigns, including Instagram slides with data and infographics explaining what the protest was about.
“It felt like I was a part of the movement, just with a different front line,” she says.
Learning rights online
Youth have used their technological savvy to understand their rights, when it comes to limits of police force or lawful procedures around detention and identification, especially where violence has flared.
This has been the great value of social media – providing the connective tissue that keeps movements connected and informed. “The protests are very decentralized but heavily coordinated online,” says Dr. Clark. “That makes it harder for governments to decapitate the movement.”
The protesters themselves appear more interested in reform than in the overthrow of governments. In Nepal, they turned fiery, with hundreds of buildings burned down before the prime minister resigned and a new one was chosen (over Discord), but that wasn’t in the demands, Mr. Prasai says. The demands were to stop corruption.
Corruption, incompetence, and inequality have left Gen Z without opportunity. That message is being conveyed with a particular Gen Z flair. Protesters in Nepal created the “nepo baby” social media meme, using the wealth displayed in online postings of privileged children to stoke outrage. And every Gen Z protest has adopted the “One Piece” flag as a central symbol. The long-running manga and anime series pits a band of misfit pirates against the hegemonic might of a rapacious “world government.”
This “meme-ification” of protest “feels new” to Sam Nadel, director of the Social Change Lab, which studies social movements. On the other hand, “there has been a role across history of humor and satire,” he adds. “It is most effective when it challenges the legitimacy of the state in creative ways.”
The neighborhood where Rakotoseheno Fanilo Marc Adriano lives in Antananarivo, Madagascar, recently had no water all day. On a different day, it had only three hours of electricity. Now an entrepreneur with a small digital marketing company, the 20-something remembers his days as a student and says with understatement that the conditions were “not optimal.” During his first year at university, he sometimes woke up at 3 a.m. to get a front-row seat because there were almost 1,000 people in his class.
He considers himself fortunate to have found a job. But he sees the future of a generation of his peers being squandered. “Young Malagasy are really talented, with a lot of skills and potential,” he says. “One of the points of the protests was to get rid of some of the barriers that are stopping young Malagasy from evolving.”
The protests point to the emergence of a new kind of class war.
“The rhetoric is class-based, but it’s not the classic class struggle we saw during the proliferation of socialist ideology in the 1960s and ’70s,” says Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, an assistant professor at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand who studies social movements and digital activism. “They are demands regarding everyday things: jobs, health care, public services. All these combined point to a sense of dignity.”
Two Moroccos
To Moroccans, “Maghreb” – the Arabic word for Morocco – expresses the “real” country that most Moroccans live in and feel is left behind, while the government promotes megaprojects and tourism.
“Morocco starts working on the World Cup, and you can see there’s a split between Morocco and Maghreb,” says Ms. Badih. “There is no progress in Maghreb. [The government officials] don’t care about it.
“And then in Morocco, you can see Casablanca, Rabat, and skyscrapers,” she says. “So people are angry about it.”
Her family has known about her involvement in social justice for years now. One of her two jobs is as a social media manager for nongovernment organizations. She has also started a business with friends to help with waste recycling across the country.
But protesting is a different prospect in authoritarian Morocco. “My family sometimes says to be careful or avoid certain things, but they have seen that no matter how much they tell me, I still have to do it,” she says. “Yes, I am careful.”
She brings her ID, a water bottle, and papers with the numbers of her family and lawyers who can help if she is arrested. She never brings signs, which are a sure way to get arrested. She knows her rights.
She says she was standing with one of her male friends when a police officer said they shouldn’t be there because it was illegal.
“‘What’s illegal about it?’” she answered. “They start lying about the law because they think that we don’t know much about it. But, I’m sorry, we do understand.”
Still, she knows the risks. “It is scary, in a way, I’m not going to lie to you,” she says. “You go out to protest, and you don’t know if you’re coming back.”
Courtesy of Kíhuria Wa Ndorongo
But now is the time for a new generation to step up, says Kìhuria Wa Ndorongo, who went to university but, like many in Kenya, is still looking for a job. For now, the 30-something is a “freelance social media blogger.” He sees change in Kenya’s youth protests.
“I feel proud of my country that finally the youth are taking charge of affairs,” says Mr. Ndorongo, who also brings a water bottle in his bag to each protest – and a Kenyan flag. “Because in the past, the older generation were the ones who were shaping the narrative, the political conversation, but now, the youth took up the issues in their own hands.”
Worldwide, other Gen Zers have been watching, and feeling hopeful.
“Our generation got it good, in a way, because we are a part of a more global, digital world so we are focused and informed, and communicating with each other,” says Ms. Badih. “We know how to get long-term systemic improvements rather than just emotional reactions. We want change.”
