In Brazil, they rallied online by the millions, sharing videos and spreading memes. In Serbia, they cycled across Europe and ran ultramarathons to make their voices heard.
Both movements burst into international public view last month as they became central during election campaigns to the pushback against authoritarianism. What they also offered, however, was a window into a wider phenomenon playing out across the globe, as youth-led movements reshape political landscapes.
“Gen Z is rising,” said Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard Kennedy School. “It is abundantly clear that a significant proportion of gen Z is tired of sitting on the sidelines while their political systems fail them.”
Researchers have documented at least ۲۵ protests around the world in which this age group – roughly those between the ages of ۱۴ and ۲۹ – has played a role.
From Bangladesh to Belgium and Italy to India, it seems gen Z, who account for about a third of the world’s population, have found their voice. “Gen Z may be experiencing a global political awakening,” Chenoweth wrote in a recent essay.
Their reasons for taking to the streets have varied widely, from protesting against corruption and an unequal playing field to calling for more investment in education, affordable housing and action on the climate crisis.
Many of the first protests to make waves were in Asia and Africa. In ۲۰۲۴, students in Dhaka, Bangladesh, made global headlines after they pulled off what was described as the world’s first successful gen Z-led revolution.
The protests began over a quota law but swiftly snowballed into a wider show of discontent against the increasingly autocratic rule of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina. Two months later, Hasina resigned and fled the country by helicopter after being, as the Associated Press reported, “chased out by young protesters”.
Two years later and ۴,۰۰۰ miles away, students were at the helm of another revolution in Serbia, pushing back against a government that had steadily tightened its grip on the media and stuffed institutions with party loyalists.
Late last month, Serbia’s students’ movement was catapulted from the streets to the halls of power as they ousted Aleksandar Vučić in elections, bringing an end to his party’s ۱۴ years in power.
Students and young people have long been at the forefront of the push for change, the analysts Cait Dallaire and Sebastian Dittgen wrote recently, citing the US civil rights movement and the ۲۰۱۱ Arab spring.
“What is unique about the current movement is the infrastructure of mobilisation: TikTok and X amplify and accelerate grievances; Discord servers and group chats enable decentralised planning; virtual private networks and mirrored content help organisers circumvent internet shutdowns,” they said.
It was this potent combination – young people in the streets and social media – that helped drive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s comeback to win Brazil’s presidential election last month. After a bruising loss in the first round to the rightwing senator Flávio Bolsonaro, there was dismay in the country’s political left.
That was until students from the Fluminense Federal University mobilised in a pro-Lula march, setting off a wave of similar actions across the country. Soon after, the congressman and Lula ally André Janones, ۴۲, created a WhatsApp channel called “Lula’s Army” that attracted millions of people looking to help boost pro-Lula content on social media.
On the night of his victory, Lula recognised their power. “I want to thank the generosity of Brazil’s young people who took to the streets to defend democracy,” he said.
Some politicians have sought to engage gen Z from the start. In the US, Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York mayor combined a canny use of social media with a legion of about ۵۰,۰۰۰ volunteers that had young people at its heart. The New York Times wrote that “volunteering for Mr Mamdani’s campaign became a salve” for young New Yorkers as the campaign became not just about “mobilising, but socialising”.
It was a nod to the global context in which many gen Zers have come of age; one riven by conflicts such as the Israel-Gaza war, the escalating climate crisis and the rise of nationalism, while the rules that have shaped the international order since the second world war are fraying.
In recent weeks, youth-led protests have begun to sweep Europe, from school students in France demanding better conditions in which to work to those in Spain who pitched tents to rally for affordable housing. In Germany, thousands of people took to the streets to protest against the cost of living and call for more investment in education, health and climate action in a movement organised by a group calling itself Gen Z regelt!, or Gen Z will sort this.
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Analysts have been swift to point to the link between the protests. “The reasons are different, but they share the same spark: the breakdown of the social contract,” Arancha González, the dean of the Paris School of International Affairs, told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “In Europe, the idea that economies generate wellbeing and social equality has been shattered.”
A similar note of disillusionment threads through India’s Cockroach movement, which began as an online satire and has since swelled into a show of force against the strongman government of Narendra Modi. Fuelled by social media and rooted in democratic ideals, the power of the movement was laid bare this summer after Cockroach-led protests forced the resignation of the country’s education minister.
Equally visible is the pushback by India’s security forces against the movement, detaining thousands, unleashing teargas and beating people with lathis, or wooden clubs. Authorities went to extreme lengths in October to keep them from gathering in central Delhi, barricading roads and shutting down the internet and public transport.
It was a window into another facet that has defined youth-led protests, as research suggests they tend to be met with higher levels of repression, despite the fact that they are no more likely to use violence than others.
In France, lawyers and rights groups say several teenagers have suffered war-like injuries from police weapons. After the ۲۰۲۴ protests in Bangladesh, UN human rights experts said as many as ۱,۴۰۰ people had been killed, mostly by security forces, while thousands more suffered severe, often life-altering injuries.
In a recent analysis, Civicus, a non-profit that monitors global civic freedoms, said: “Because they question the distribution of economic and political power, gen Z-led protests have invariably been met with state violence,” linking the violence meted out to young protesters with their focus on systems and institutions that have long been generally accepted.
In Morocco, more than ۲,۰۰۰ people were charged and many received harsh prison sentences after a ۲۰۲۵ movement known as Gen Z ۲۱۲ targeted officials over corruption, neglected public services and the lack of opportunities. Weeks later, in Mexico, youth-led protests over corruption and crime led to clashes with police in which dozens of people were arrested.
The outcomes of both of these movements show the varying success of gen Z protests. But at times, the foundations laid in one protest have given rise to others. In the US, much of today’s youth organising was shaped by the pro-Palestine student movement, in which there were thousands of arrests, expulsions and suspensions. Many schools instated anti-protest policies amid a broader rollback of educational freedom on campus.
Students, however, have continued to push for change. Last month hundreds in North Carolina marched in the heat to the polls after their historically Black university was denied a polling site, while thousands across the country have responded to the Cornell ۷ case by skipping class, protesting and launching occupations.
As Chenoweth of the Harvard Kennedy School noted, the wave of recent youth-led protests may mark the beginning of a “profound generational transformation in world affairs” – one that could be capable of countering the global trend of democratic backsliding.
Ultimately, however, as Bilal Narjissi, a ۱۷-year-old high school student in a suburb north of Paris recently told the Associated Press, the explosion of youth movements across Europe hints at a wider truth that has long been overlooked across the globe.
“We all agree on one point,” he said. “That young people are treated like children, far too much, and that they aren’t listened to enough.”
