The Gen Z protests are a series of ongoing political demonstrations, uprisings, and revolutions predominantly led by those born from the mid-to-late 1990s to the early 2010s. While Generation Z has been politically active since the early 2010s, the current wave of protests emerged in the early 2020s.
The 2024 July Uprising in Bangladesh is widely cited as the first successful "Gen Z" revolution, which popularized the term. However, Britannica describes Sri Lanka's 2022 uprising as "perhaps... the first time that Gen Z toppled a national government". Gen Z protests in other Asian countries have since followed, including a successful revolution in Nepal. By 2025 and 2026, the protests had spread worldwide to Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America.
Although the specific causes of the protests depend on the region, they have generally been in response to perceived social inequality, rising costs of living, corruption and authoritarianism. Protests have also addressed international issues, such as the war in Gaza.
As the first true digitally native generation, Gen Z has used social media as a common tool for activism and coordination. Bangladesh and Nepal have also seen the emergence of the world's first Gen Z political parties, the National Citizen Party and Rastriya Swatantra Party, whose candidates became the world's first Gen Z leaders elected as members of parliament.
Background
The first unrest Generation Z experienced was related to the Great Recession and, later into adulthood of some, issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as of March 2026, there have been at least 120 "significant anti-government protests" in no less than 73 countries over the last 12 months, the largest figures since 2017.
Causes
The demonstrations have had several causes, varying from country to country. However, they generally relate to dissatisfaction with ruling governments, economic turmoil, claims of corruption, and a large, disaffected, often unemployed youth population that experienced declining standards of living due to difficulty accessing basic utilities and resources. Rising social inequality has also been described as forming the common thread of the protests and riots caused by Gen Z around the world,
The Bloomberg Economics study examined possible impetuses for Gen Z protests on a country-by-country basis, finding income inequality to be a leading cause of youth mobilization in Peru and Mexico. Political corruption was a key driver of unrest in the Philippines, while extreme poverty and inadequate access to basic sanitation and clean water drove actions in Madagascar. Carnegie's Global Protest Tracker likewise identified state corruption as a primary catalyst for protests, with anti-democratic excesses and economic difficulties as secondary ones.
Early Gen Z activism (2018–2023)
Gen Z political mobilization started to be recorded as early as in 2010. The earliest known example is during the 2010 United Kingdom student protests, where it was reported that a significant percentage of other people at the protests were part of Gen Z. In October 2015, as part of the Peruvian protests against Las Bambas mining project, a Gen Z group organized and pursued a protest that culminated in a March to Congress.
During the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey, the 15-year-old Berkin Elvan was killed after a police officer struck him in the head by a tear-gas canister. Following his death, children participated in various protests. It is worth noting however, that the average age during the Gezi Park protests was 28.
The first recorded Gen-Z led protests emerged in response to gun violence in the United States, specifically to the Parkland high school shooting on 14 February 2018. March for Our Lives, a student-led organisation formed by survivors of the shooting, led a national school walkout in March 2018. Students staged a walkout again on 20 April 2018, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre.
Fridays for Future, launched by Greta Thunberg on 20 August 2018, was the first instance in which a series of protests was ever defined as "Gen Z protests", specifically in a December 2019 article by Ipsos. The term was again used to describe the 2020–2021 Thai pro-democracy protests. While the term was not used to describe the Black Lives Matter protests beginning in 2020, 41% of protesters were between the ages of 18–29.
In 2022, the Aragalaya led to the overthrowal of the Sri Lankan government, with youths playing a major part by carrying out protests at Galle Face Green.
Revolutions (2024–present)
The protests in Bangladesh in 2024 are widely cited as the first successful Gen Z revolution in the world, inspiring similar Gen Z protests in other Asian countries including Nepal, Indonesia, Philippines, Timor-Leste, and the Maldives. The term was later used to describe the 2024 Kenya Finance Bill protests, a largely Gen Z lead mass rioting movement against a controversial tax hike.
The term garnered wider global popularity following the ousting of the Nepali government in 2025 and a string of concurrent protests that occurred around and after it. The global wave of demonstrations then reached further with similar youth-led protests springing up in Madagascar and Morocco. In September, an unpopular pension reform and corruption scandal further sparked a self-styled "Gen Z march" in Lima, Peru. The Gen Z protests had thus by that month reached the continents of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. At the end of September, Italian media noted the large involvement of Gen Z protesters in the country's general strikes and protests for Gaza. By the beginning of October, the year 2025 was even described as a potential "year of the protest", a title that was previously applied to the year 2019.
In 2026, French students and teachers started a series of protests against poor school conditions. Protests have since grown, as labor unions and other political movements joined to protest against the rising fuel prices and cost-of-living among the population, with 500,000–800,000 people reportedly taking part across the country.
Methods
Members of Generation Z, who grew up in the age of the Internet, have commonly used social media as a platform to organize and coordinate protests and riots. The use of social media as foundational to movement-building emerged during the Arab Spring and Occupy movement, primarily led by millennials.
Protestors in Morocco and Nepal frequently exchanged plans via the messaging platform Discord, and other apps like Instagram, TikTok and Telegram have also been noted as platforms for communication and spreading their agenda. In Morocco, the "GenZ 212" Discord server surged from 3,000 members to over 150,000 by 2 October.
While previous protests in Nepal were initially peaceful or limited to online activity, a government ban on social media in September 2025 spurred direct action, with Gen Z protestors criticizing the ban as censorship. At the time of the ban, the protestors were vocalizing their dissent to alleged corruption and nepotism through the dissemination of short videos on Facebook and TikTok. Following the overthrow of the Nepalese government, online coordination, in particular Discord, was used to elect an interim prime minister.
A 2025 study by Bloomberg Economics assessed dynamics surrounding Gen Z protests, finding a correlation between social media penetration, common age connection, and increased social discontent over issues such as socio-economic inequality, unemployment, and corruption.
Symbols
In various Gen Z protests, the Straw Hats' Jolly Roger from the manga One Piece has been used as an international symbol of the protests. The flag was used in the protests in Indonesia, Madagascar, Nepal and Bulgaria.
The first and the earliest use of the Straw Hat Pirate flag in protest activity in real-life world, was in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in October 2023 when thousands of Indonesians protested the Gaza war and Gaza crisis. Almost two years later, student protesters in Indonesia had begun flying the flag again in February 2025. The flag came into prominence during the 2025 Indonesian anti-government protests which started in the weeks leading up to Indonesia's Independence Day on 17 August.
In Nepal, when the government of K. P. Sharma Oli was toppled in Nepal, protesters hung the flag at the gates of the Singha Durbar palace as it burned. It has also been used in the Philippines, Peru, and Madagascar. The response to the use of the Straw Hat flag has been harsh, with an Indonesian lawmaker saying it was an attempt to divide national unity and another suggesting it could amount to treason, drawing criticism from Amnesty International.
In the United States, many protesters utilised the design of Manny Heffley from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series during the George Floyd protests to oppose police brutality and support the Black Lives Matter movement. On June 8, 2020, a satirical TikTok post of someone drawing the symbol during a protest went viral. It then began to trend alongside the phrase "the Manny will not be televised." Users created a flag parodying that of the US, featuring black and yellow stripes and the drawing of Manny in the canton. Graffiti featuring Manny alongside anti-police slogans including All cops are bastards and Fuck 12.
In Southeast Asian countries, other pop culture symbols have been used to signal defiance as well, among them references to Harry Potter and the three-finger salute from The Hunger Games. Raqib Naik, director of the Center for the Study of Organised Hate, said "I think we are entering a new era of organising that draws heavily from digital, pop and gaming culture, creating a common vocabulary".