It’s hard not to notice what’s happening around the world. Gen Z is rebelling around the world, with youth-led protests erupting across multiple continents throughout 2024 and 2025. This global movement has toppled governments, forced policy reversals, and challenged established power structures in numerous countries. South Asia has seen the most dramatic changes. Three governments have fallen to youth-driven protests – Sri Lanka in 2022, Bangladesh in 2024, and Nepal this month (September 2025). Bangladesh’s “July Revolution” or “Gen Z Revolution” began as a quota reform movement but escalated after government killings of protesters, ultimately forcing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign in August 2024 . In Nepal, a social media ban sparked massive Gen Z protests that killed at least 72 people and forced Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli to resign within days. Africa has also experienced sustained youth mobilization. Kenya’s Gen Z movement forced President Ruto to withdraw an unpopular finance bill in 2024, and protests continue with demonstrations in June this year killing at least 8 people. Nigeria saw #EndBadGovernance protests in August, 2024, organized through social media against fuel subsidy removal and economic hardship . Ghana, Uganda, and Mozambique also experienced significant youth-led unrest in 2024. Europe has also joined the movement. Serbia has witnessed the largest student protests in modern Balkan history, continuing for over three months as students demand justice and accountability following a deadly train station collapse.
Recent deadly protests in both Nepal and Indonesia share the common thread of Gen Z leadership, driven by frustration over lack of jobs, corruption, and economic inequality . Social media has become a powerful tool for youth activism across South and Southeast Asian countries including Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Young people globally are experiencing “precarious types of employment” and are “furious over a lack of jobs, rampant corruption and rising economic inequality”. Many in Gen Z have lived through two economic recessions (2008-09 and COVID-19) and spent formative pandemic years in isolation, which amplified their digital platform usage. Perhaps most significantly, young people worldwide “have less and less reason to believe they will be able to attain the quality of life their parents achieved” and are finding that “institutions of electoral politics are failing to address their grievances”. Video reels, encrypted apps, and a black pirate flag have become worldwide messages of defiance . The Straw Hat Pirates’ Jolly Roger flag from the manga series One Piece was used by protesters in Nepal, similar to 2025 Indonesian protests . Social media platforms have enabled rapid mobilization despite government attempts to suppress them. If this sounds familiar….it should.
Here are compelling examples of rapid digital mobilization for civil upheaval across different eras and platforms starting with the Arab Spring, the original “Social Media Revolution”. The Arab Spring demonstrated social media’s power for rapid mobilization, where “online revolutionary styled motivations often preceded mass protests on the ground, and social media played a central role in shaping political debates”. In Egypt, the January 25 protest attracted upwards of 30,000 participants, with Facebook and Twitter helping “significant numbers of otherwise isolated activists and citizens to identify each other, form networks and relationships, and coordinate their actions”. When Egypt’s government cut all internet access nationwide, “the Internet blackout in Egypt failed to stop the protests, seeming to fuel them instead” because protesters had already established a known location – Tahrir Square. Nine out of ten Egyptians and Tunisians said they used Facebook to organize protests and spread awareness.
The 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests featured a “flat organizational structure” similar to other global movements, with protesters embracing “leaderless” organizing through the slogan “no central stage”. We’ve seen this trend with Occupy Wall Street and Antifa in the U.S.. While Facebook and Twitter dominated earlier movements, Hong Kong protesters shifted to new platforms, demonstrating how activists adapt to new technologies. Social media enabled “sustainable mobilization of information and discussions” allowing protests to “continue even without a centralized organization,” with activists using encrypted messaging and anonymous platforms. During Belarus’s 2020 protests following disputed elections, Telegram became “practically the only means of communication” after a three-day internet shutdown . The Warsaw-based NEXTA Telegram channels saw subscriber counts balloon to over 1.5 million during the protests.
TikTok is now the new frontier of viral activism, so its particularly interesting that an establishment administration like the Trump Administration would be cutting a deal this very moment to keep TikTok alive and well in the U.S….where activists can deploy it against the establishment. TikTok’s algorithm has created unprecedented reach for protest content – one viral video from Indonesia showing street protests gained “1.2 million likes and 8.6 million views” with support comments from users across Southeast Asia . In Southeast Asia, TikTok facilitated “movements that led to offline protests” in Indonesia’s 2020 Omnibus Law protests, Malaysia in 2021, Thailand’s 2020 Youth Protests, and Myanmar’s 2021 military coup protests. TikTok’s “unique algorithm, which pushes content based on user interaction, preference and exploration” allows political content from Southeast Asia to reach global audiences, with users commenting “What is happening in Thailand?” and “What is happening in Indonesia?” Iran’s “TikTok generation” has leveraged social media despite government restrictions, with an estimated “24 million Instagram users in Iran” using VPNs to access blocked platforms . Telegram became essential for Iranian opposition, with the platform having “40 million monthly and 25 million daily users in Iran” before government crackdowns .
These examples reveal consistent patterns. Activists quickly adapt to new platforms when older ones are restricted, use encrypted messaging for coordination during internet shutdowns, leverage algorithmic amplification for global reach, and employ cultural content (memes, music, popular symbols) to evade censorship while spreading political messages. The speed of digital mobilization has accelerated from weeks during the Arab Spring to hours or even minutes with platforms like TikTok and Telegram. This represents a genuinely global phenomenon where Gen Z is using digital tools to organize against entrenched power structures, demanding economic opportunity, political accountability, and systemic change across diverse political systems. The common thread is frustration over stagnant economies in which only the elite seem to prosper and anger over self-dealing by an entrenched ruling class and the lavish lifestyles of the elected officials. In addition, people have been disillusioned by traditional political parties and infuriated by heavy-handed police action against the protests. “Gen Zs have become the watchdogs we never expected,” wrote Kenyan human rights lawyer Gitobu Imanyara. “They are scrutinizing websites, cross-checking numbers and exposing rot in real time.” Reels they upload showing police using excessive force typically go viral.
In 2013 I published a book about the global pension crisis and one of those themes was about the impending “Generational Warfare” over the “Privilege Gap”, as I called it. I declared that the world could not build its walls high enough to stop it. This is all taking shape now it seems and its happening in the places with the biggest wealth gaps in the Emerging Markets as well as in the good old U.S.A.. We all understand that tearing down a corrupt and undemocratic regime is one thing. Replacing it with a government that works for everyone is far harder. It may well be that if they want to institute reforms, Gen Zers will have to join the system, something many are unwilling to contemplate at this point. They need to make the transition from protesters to policymakers — from outside agitators to inside players, and as they mature that will be more and more possible. My generation see social media as part of the problem and my youngest son, Tom’s, Gen Z crowd (he just barely makes that cut) think vehicles like TikTok are not only not the problem, but perhaps Z-Answer.