Context

• Across the world, democratic systems are experiencing democratic backsliding, weakening institutions, and growing authoritarianism.
• Many citizens appeared resigned to unresponsive governance, yet a new political actor has emerged: Generation Z (1997–2012).
• Recent protests in Bangladesh (2024) and Nepal (2025), organised around corruption, transparency, and accountability, demonstrate that political participation has not disappeared but is transforming.
• Unlike earlier protest waves such as the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street, which generated visibility without lasting institutional change, contemporary youth mobilisation requires understanding beyond traditional frameworks of parties, leadership, and ideology.

Generational Change and Political Imagination

• Each generation reshapes social values and ethical practices.
• Older traditions persist as an absent presence within new forms, yet unfamiliar expressions often appear superficial to earlier generations. Political participation is therefore not declining but changing in form.
• Gen Z was frequently considered politically disengaged, absorbed in technology and detached from public life.
• However, organised youth protests reveal a different reality. Democracy rests not only on constitutional frameworks and institutions but also on everyday moral behaviour and collective emotions.
• Gen Z’s politics operates primarily within everyday experience rather than formal structures, making it less visible yet socially influential.

The Worldview of Gen Z

• Gen Z embodies a blend of radical individualism and relative tolerance, showing less overt prejudice and cynicism.
• Its guiding principle resembles: personal is political, while politics itself is not treated as a personal ideological commitment.
• This generation prefers lived conduct over doctrine. Acting as exemplars rather than emissaries, it demonstrates values through behaviour instead of advocacy.
• It resists preaching and avoids preaching to others, making sustained collective mobilisation difficult.
• Young people react strongly to visible hierarchies and discrimination but often lack a systemic analysis of structural inequality.
• Comfort with the virtual world shapes political participation. Digital platforms allow expression without intense face-to-face interaction.
• Consequently, protests are typically leaderless, ideologically loose, and episodic protests rather than long-term movements. 

Changing Forms of Protest

• Comparison with the farmers’ movement (2020–24) clarifies the shift.
• The farmers-maintained leadership, organisation, and sustained demands for years. In contrast, Gen Z mobilisations appear suddenly and dissolve quickly, yet leave a lasting symbolic impact.
• This pattern reflects a combination of confidence and insecurity. Gen Z grew up in an environment of social democratisation, encouraging self-expression and self-introspection, but also faces shrinking economic opportunities and employment instability.
• Their political engagement is therefore assertive yet fragmented.
• Mental health awareness further shapes behaviour. Openness to mental health, therapy, and emotional vulnerability contrasts with earlier generational restraint.
• Experiences of mental despair, workplace toxicity, and anomie produce intense but short-lived political participation. Emotional precarity contributes to fleeting involvement in democratic processes.

Identity, Consumption, and Nationalism

• Gen Z links identity formation with consumption patterns. Markets, technology, and education shape self-representation and weaken traditional ascriptive identities such as caste and religion.
• Digital access and information serve as sources of dignity, sometimes more meaningful than inherited status.
• Possessing advanced technology, symbolised by the iPhone, becomes an imagined social equaliser.
• This produces a generation that is more secularised yet inward-looking, prioritising personal choices.
• However, rapid digital exposure can also foster hyper-nationalism.
• Unlike earlier cultural chauvinism, this nationalism emphasises future potential and developmental achievement, pride in space missions, technological innovation, and global visibility despite persistent inequality.

Conclusion

• Generation Z is transforming democratic participation rather than abandoning it.
• Although its activism may appear inconsistent compared to traditional movements, it reflects deeper changes in democratic culture.
• This generation’s contradictions, individualistic yet socially aware, confident yet anxious, globalised yet nationalist, make its influence unpredictable.
• Established expectations of activism may not be met, but new forms of engagement are emerging.
• Gen Z therefore represents not the decline of democracy but its adaptation to a digitally connected and uncertain social world.