When the government rendered millions of social media accounts useless, Nepal’s Generation Z knew they had only one choice: take to the streets. The result is that Nepal now has a rare opportunity for change.

For a generation that from their earliest days have expressed themselves, connected and organised online, the social media ban made clear the government didn’t care about them. Tens of thousands protested, increasingly challenging government corruption. Within a week, an estimated 75 people were dead as security forces fired on protesters. Shortly after, the prime minister fled, with Nepal’s first female leader installed to guide the country towards fresh elections scheduled for March.

The interim authorities and next elected government must now ensure accountability for the killings, tackle corruption, create better economic opportunities for young people and improve respect for civic freedoms. A newly mobilised generation must help lead the way.

Gen Z around the world will be watching what comes next. What happened in Nepal has reverberated far beyond the Himalayas. In countries as diverse as Indonesia, Madagascar and Morocco, young people have followed events in Nepal, learned and mobilised. They’ve used the same tools, faced similar violence and demanded the same thing: fundamental change.

Social media ban

This wasn’t the Nepali authorities’ first attempt to restrict social media. In November 2023, the government banned TikTok, saying it disrupted social harmony, although the move came after people started using the platform to criticise it. The ban ended in August 2024. Earlier this year the government introduced a strict Social Media Bill allowing it to ban a wide range of content. In July, the Nepal Telecommunications Authority told service providers to block the Telegram messaging app.

But the ban announced on 4 September was on a different level. At a stroke the government blocked 26 social media platforms, including Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Signal, WhatsApp, X/Twitter and YouTube. The government said this was because they’d failed to comply with regulation requirements. But the move came amid a growing trend of ‘NepoKids’ posts exposing the ostentatiously wealthy lifestyles of politicians’ children. Posts drew a grim contrast with the everyday struggles of most young people in a country where a fifth of people aged 15 to 24 are unemployed.

For Nepal’s young people, the ban couldn’t have made clearer how out of touch the cadre of older political leaders was. Nepal is a youthful country with a growing population, where the median age is just 25. Out of some 30 million people, Nepal has 14.3 million social media identities, with use growing rapidly.

The government’s challenge to crucial online freedoms proved a tipping point. When Gen Z took to the streets in numbers, they channelled years of frustration with corruption, daily hardships, lack of opportunities and the remoteness of the political elite.

Violence unleashed

The state responded with violence. On 8 September, when some protesters broke into the parliamentary complex, police fired live ammunition along with rubber bullets, teargas and water cannon. By the end of that day, 19 people had been killed, many of them young, and hundreds injured. Police used military-grade ammunition and shot many victims in the head.

Lethal violence intended to subdue protests often backfires, bringing more people to the streets to demand justice, and Nepal proved no exception. Protests intensified even after the government ended its social media ban. On 9 September, Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli resigned, fleeing to an army barracks with other ministers.

Chaos ensued. Crowds reportedly attacked journalists, police officers and politicians, looted and vandalised property and set fire to government buildings, including parliament, Supreme Court and Oli’s house. Protest organisers suggested some of those involved were infiltrators intent on undermining the movement. Over 13,500 prisoners reportedly escaped from jail during this time, and some likely played a part in the violence.

In response, the army took over security operations and imposed a nationwide curfew. But what could have marked a lurch towards authoritarianism took a more hopeful turn with a decision to dissolve parliament and instal Chief Justice Sushila Karki as interim prime minister on 12 September.

A global Gen Z awakening

Nepal’s breakthrough has energised youth movements worldwide. But it’s not the first Gen Z uprising. Last year, Gen Z protests rose up in Kenya, sparked by sweeping tax increases on top of widespread youth unemployment and the high cost of living. Protests forced the reversal of the changes but young people continued to demand deeper political reform. Kenyan protests inspired those in several other African countries, including Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda. People mobilised despite brutal, sometimes lethal, violence.

This year the wave has swept across several Asian countries. In Indonesia, a proposed increase in housing subsidies for members of parliament brought Gen Z to the streets. In the Philippines, students were to the fore as tens of thousands protested against corruption after revelations that millions of dollars supposed to improve flood defences – a vital response to climate change – had been siphoned away in phantom projects. In India, Gen Z-led protests in Ladakh, part of the disputed Kashmir region, demanded the return of the autonomy the federal government unilaterally stripped away in 2019. Young people protested in Timor-Leste when the government announced a plan to spend US$4 million to give lawmakers free cars.

The pattern extends beyond Asia. Days of Gen Z-led protests have unfolded in Morocco, driven by corruption and triggered by the deaths of eight women while giving birth, with protesters contrasting underfunding of vital services with spending to prepare for hosting 2030 football World Cup matches. Madagascar has been rocked by weeks of anti-government protests openly taking inspiration from those in Nepal and Morocco, sparked by electricity and water shortages. Gen Z Peruvians have also protested against their president, opposing a policy that mandates pension contributions from the age of 18.

Many of the protests stem from combined economic frustration and anger at political exclusion. In many countries, highly educated young people face bleak prospects. Jobs are scarce and costs are high and rising. A political class one or two generations removed makes the decisions. One bad policy that affects young people or one blatant example of corruption can be enough to burst the dam.

Gen Z protests: the 2024-2025 wave

Digital democracy in action

Social media is playing a big role in how Gen Z’s dissent is being mobilised, knowledge is being shared and protests are being organised. In Nepal, people used VPNs to circumvent the ban and took to TikTok, which wasn’t banned this time. They used generative AI software such as ChatGPT to develop social media packages that went viral, helping recruit protesters and giving the protests a distinct Gen Z identity.

They also made extensive use of Discord, a messaging, voice and video call app developed for gamers. Discord brings some advantages over the bigger platforms: it offers relative anonymity, doesn’t have the same association with regressive tech oligarchs as Facebook and X/Twitter and, because security forces are less familiar with it, may be harder to crack down on.

In Nepal, Discord enabled a radical experiment in democracy. Over 10,000 people, including from the country’s extensive diaspora, used the platform to select who they’d like to serve as interim prime minister, choosing Karki. This was a sometimes messy collective exercise, with evident attempts to infiltrate the discussion by groups that want to restore the monarchy, but crucially, organisers rapidly debunked disinformation through a live fact-checking channel.

Social media has played a huge part in other Gen Z mobilisations. Morocco’s protesters have also used Discord to organise protests, including through online voting to choose between potential actions, with young women playing a prominent role. Protests in Madagascar have been coordinated by an online youth movement, Gen Z Mada, through platforms including Facebook and TikTok. In the Philippines, over 30,000 people contributed to a Reddit channel to expose the lavish lifestyles of wealthy elites.

This represents an evolution from earlier uses of social media in protest. Social media captured headlines when it helped mobilise the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings in 2011, but in contrast with their predecessors, today’s activists were born digital. What was once primarily a means of sharing information has become more a space for collective conversation and deliberation, enabling the kind of democratic experimentation seen in Nepal.

Social media of course brings many dangers, including disinformation, hate speech, state surveillance and instrumentalisation for regressive political purposes. Discord isn’t immune from these problems, and has a history of being used by far-right groups to spread hate. But as abandoning social media isn’t an option for Gen Z, the question is of how to limit the problems, including by building in plans to tackle disinformation and hate speech.

Shared symbols have also reinforced connections between movements. A flag with a cartoon skull in a straw hat, from Japanese manga One Piece, was waved at protests in Nepal, and then in Indonesia and the Philippines: anime offers a ready shorthand for young people, particularly in Asia.

Sadly, protest violence has also been a common thread. Security forces in Madagascar have used live ammunition, killing several people. In Indonesia, 21-year-old motorcycle-taxi driver Affan Kurniawan was killed when police ran him over in an armoured vehicle, sparking outrage that led to violence. Police in Peru and Timor-Leste used teargas against young protesters. Governments have often vilified protesters as criminals, extremists and agents of opposition parties.

Yet protests have achieved tangible gains. In Indonesia, the government cut some of its allowances to parliamentarians. The Timor-Leste government scrapped its plans to give free cars and lifetime pensions to lawmakers. In the Philippines, the speaker of the House of Representatives resigned and an independent commission is now investigating corruption in flood prevention funding. Madagascar’s President Andry Rajoelina sacked his government – although protesters continue to call on him to resign.

Next steps

While Gen Z movements mobilise in numerous countries, they’ll follow with keen interest what happens next in Nepal, where protests have achieved the biggest impacts.

Karki’s track record in calling out corruption, which has often put her at odds with the government, and her condemnation of the recent security force violence, made her a popular choice. Now she leads an interim administration that excludes the major parties.

Karki has pledged to pay compensation to families of those who died during the protests and to undertake reforms to tackle corruption and create jobs for young people. The government has also established a three-person panel to investigate the violence, due to report within three months. This inquiry must be fully independent, investigate claims of violent infiltration, hold perpetrators to account and lead to reforms to prevent police violence in response to future protests.

Nepal’s revolution took inspiration from previous South Asian protests, in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, where youth-led movements toppled authoritarian presidents. But these also offer cautionary tales. Bangladesh’s interim administration, which took over in 2024, has been hampered by jostling for political position ahead of planned elections and civil society continues to document arbitrary arrests, press freedom violations and attacks on religious minorities. In Sri Lanka, where the president was ousted in 2022, the new president has so far failed to keep promises to roll back restrictive laws, and many of those involved in the protests continue to be criminalised.

Nepal has an opportunity to do better. The country’s Gen Z have discovered their power, and made clear they reject cosmetic reforms. They demand genuine involvement in governance, not token gestures. They expect the government to deliver accountability, tackle corruption and create economic opportunities. They want the next election to produce leaders who understand that the old ways of doing politics are over. But the window for transformative change is narrow, and Nepal’s Gen Z will need to stay alert and continue to exercise collective power to keep hope alive.

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