Connecting Across Generations

You Underestimated Them: How a Generation Everyone Called Disengaged Toppled Four Governments in Three Years

Last updated on September 16, 2026

Published Sep 16, 2026 · 12 min read · Leading Across Generations

Kathmandu, 8 September 2025. A crowd in school uniforms is at the parliament perimeter, phones out, filming the world’s most self-documented protest. By nightfall, the Prime Minister was gone. Within six weeks, the ban on social media that lit the fuse was reversed, an interim government was in, and a Discord server with more than 100,000 members was helping to shape who took power next.

Then look back. Colombo, July 2022. Dhaka, August 2024. Antananarivo, October 2025. Four national governments have fallen in three years with the same demographic in the front row.

For most of the past decade, the mainstream commentary said this generation was too online to care, too soft to organise, too disengaged to make anything happen. The evidence has now overtaken the commentary. This is a short accounting of what a generation the world underestimated actually did, how they did it, what they got wrong, and what the rest of us should take from the receipts.

TL;DR

Between 2022 and 2025, Gen Z-led movements toppled four national governments and forced policy reversals in more than a dozen countries. Carnegie’s Global Protest Tracker logged new demonstrations in over 70 countries in 2025 alone. The generation everyone called disengaged just reset the political map. Getting a leader out turned out to be the easy part.

In This Article

  1. What did Gen Z actually accomplish between 2022 and 2025?
  2. How did Nepal’s teenagers run a Discord server to help pick a Prime Minister?
  3. What was the shared playbook that made the Aragalaya, the July Uprising, and Antananarivo actually work?
  4. Where did the “Gen Z is disengaged” narrative come from, and why does it keep being wrong?
  5. The uncomfortable follow-through question no one wants to ask
  6. What this generation just proved to the rest of us
  7. Frequently Asked Questions
  8. What the receipts actually show

What did Gen Z actually accomplish between 2022 and 2025?

Four elected or entrenched governments fell to youth-led mobilisation in three years, and dozens more were forced into policy reversals. Carnegie’s Emissary noted “anti-government protests flooded streets across the globe in 2025,” with new demonstrations tracked in more than seventy countries (Carnegie Endowment, December 2025). This isn’t a series of one-offs. It is a wave.

Sri Lanka, 2022. The Aragalaya (“The Struggle”) ended the Rajapaksa dynasty. Foreign-exchange reserves had collapsed from around $8 billion in late 2019 to under $2 billion by December 2021, producing fuel queues, blackouts and shortages of food and medicine. On 9 July 2022, protesters overran the Presidential Secretariat and Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled. Ranil Wickremesinghe governed as caretaker. In September 2024 the JVP/NPP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake won the presidency, the delayed electoral fulfilment of what the streets had started two years earlier.

Bangladesh, 2024. Sheikh Hasina’s 15 years in power ended in six weeks. The trigger was the High Court reinstating a 30 percent civil-service job quota on 5 June 2024. The escalation was Hasina calling protesters “grandchildren of Razakars,” collaborator-slang that lit the country on fire. On 5 August 2024, she fled to India. An interim government under Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus took over. This is now widely cited as the first successful “Gen Z revolution.”

Nepal, September 2025. The government banned 26 social-media platforms on 4 September. Within four days, 19 protesters were dead and the parliament was on fire. PM K.P. Sharma Oli resigned on 9 September; the army escorted him out. Former chief justice Sushila Karki became interim PM.

Madagascar, October 2025. On 12 October 2025, the elite CAPSAT unit defected. President Andry Rajoelina fled the country the next day on a French military plane. The National Assembly impeached him 130-1 on 14 October. Colonel Michael Randrianirina was sworn in as interim president on 17 October 2025 (France 24, October 2025).

And these are only the regime changes. Kenya’s Ruto withdrew the 2024 Finance Bill after more than 100,000 marched on 25 June 2024 and dozens were killed. Indonesia forced a reversal of the 2024 regional-election law within days. Georgia, the Philippines, Morocco and Peru all saw mass youth mobilisation with tangible concessions.

How did Nepal’s teenagers run a Discord server to help pick a Prime Minister?

Nepal’s protests may be the first case in history where a social-media ban felled an elected government, and the coordination happened on the platforms the government could not shut down. When the ban hit on 4 September 2025, teenagers responded with VPNs, QR-coded flyers pointing to Discord, and a server that grew past 100,000 members. Roughly 10,000 users deliberated and polled to help shape the interim leadership decision.

That number matters. It isn’t “a Discord server elected the Prime Minister.” Sushila Karki was chosen through the constitutional process. But the deliberations on that server produced the political consensus that made her acceptable, in a moment when Nepal had no elected body functioning and no functioning street-level negotiator. A platform many parents dismissed as gaming chat did the pre-political work an entire generation of parties had failed to do.

Zoom out and the pattern repeats. Morocco’s GenZ212, a Discord server created by anonymous users on 18 September 2025, grew from under 1,000 to roughly 180,000 members inside a month. It coordinated leaderless, non-partisan protests demanding hospitals over stadiums. Kenya’s Gen Z protesters organised entirely on TikTok and X, refusing tribal and party affiliations that had defined Kenyan politics for a generation. Madagascar’s activists used Discord and encrypted messaging alongside the One Piece Straw Hat pirate flag, a manga symbol that flew from Antananarivo to Kathmandu to Lima as a transnational identifier.

Here is the reframe that most commentary keeps missing. Every adult critic of this generation said Gen Z was “too glued to their phones.” Those exact phones ran the elections that toppled governments. The tools were not the disengagement. The tools were the infrastructure.

What was the shared playbook that made the Aragalaya, the July Uprising, and Antananarivo actually work?

Three ingredients recur across every successful case in the wave, and their absence explains why other youth uprisings stalled. The successful cases had a visible specific outrage, real-time visibility of elite hypocrisy, and a refusal by security forces to fire at the decisive moment. Where all three lined up, governments fell.

The first ingredient is a specific, immediate outrage. Sri Lanka had fuel queues and daily blackouts. Bangladesh had the quota reinstatement on 5 June 2024. Nepal had the social-media ban of 4 September 2025. Madagascar had chronic water and power cuts. In every case, the trigger was not an abstract grievance about “the system.” It was something that hit the same day, in a shape everyone could feel.

The second ingredient is real-time visibility of elite hypocrisy. Nepal’s “nepo kids” content, the viral videos of politicians’ children holidaying abroad while the country ran out of options, made corruption personal in a way that decades of transparency-index reports never had. Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa dynasty across five simultaneous government posts. The Philippines’ Rolls-Royce “bought for the free umbrella.” Morocco’s stadiums built for AFCON 2025 and the 2030 World Cup, against a health system that had just lost eight women in childbirth at a single Agadir hospital. Elite consumption isn’t new. Watching it in real time is.

The third ingredient is the decisive one. In every successful case, the security forces refused to fire at the moment it mattered. Bangladesh’s army stood down on 4 August 2024. Madagascar’s CAPSAT defected on 12 October 2025. Nepal’s army escorted Oli out on 9 September 2025 rather than defending him. Where the military stayed loyal or repression was total, in Iran, in Myanmar, in Tanzania, no regime change followed regardless of how brave or organised the protests were.

Serbia offers the endurance version of the same playbook. A concrete canopy at Novi Sad railway station collapsed on 1 November 2024, killing 16, blamed on corruption in the reconstruction. A leaderless, strictly non-violent student movement sustained itself for more than a year. A March 2025 Belgrade rally drew up to 325,000, Serbia’s largest ever. It has not toppled the government. It has changed what the country talks about.

Where did the “Gen Z is disengaged” narrative come from, and why does it keep being wrong?

The narrative predates the evidence and the evidence has now overtaken it. Youth-led protest is not a Gen Z novelty. It is the historical norm, and this generation is showing up harder in worse conditions than the last one did.

Look at the research. Erica Chenoweth and Matthew Cebul, writing in the Journal of Democracy in January 2026, find that between 1990 and 2020, roughly 80 percent of maximalist nonviolent campaigns to topple national leaders or win self-determination (n=209) featured substantial youth participation (Journal of Democracy, January 2026). The pattern goes back further than the phones do. What is genuinely new is the leaderless design, the transnational symbol-sharing, and the speed of diffusion, not the fact of youth on the barricades.

Now look at what they inherited. The ILO’s Global Employment Trends for Youth 2024 reports that even as headline youth unemployment hit a 15-year low of 13 percent in 2023, 20.4 percent of young people worldwide, one in five, were NEET (not in employment, education or training) (International Labour Organization, 2024). Graduate joblessness runs near 29 percent in India, close to 20 percent in Nepal, over 35 percent in Morocco. This is a generation more educated and more excluded at the same time.

And even the “Gen Z is disengaged” survey data does not say what commentators think it says. The Nippon Foundation’s 2019 survey of 18-year-olds across nine countries found only about 18 percent of Japanese respondents believed they could change society, the lowest of the nine. But Japan’s civic disengagement is cross-generational; parents feel the same way. If it were a Gen Z trait, we would not see Japanese Boomers responding identically. It is a national and structural condition, not a generational one.

Which is exactly the point. What looked like disengagement was often preparation, or exit, or a rational calculation that voice was not going to be listened to yet. Under the right conditions, this generation shows up harder than anyone predicted. Under the wrong ones, they lie flat and wait. The generational label was doing analytical work it was never capable of doing.

The uncomfortable follow-through question no one wants to ask

Toppling a leader is now comparatively easy. Governing is a much harder problem, and the leading study finds the youth uprisings have not yet fixed the structural conditions that produced them. That is not the same as saying the movements failed. It means the harder work is what comes after, and the honest accounting has to include it.

Look at where power actually landed. Bangladesh got Muhammad Yunus, a 84-year-old Nobel economist who was not part of the movement. Nepal got Sushila Karki, a 73-year-old former chief justice acceptable to old and new political factions. Madagascar got a colonel who suspended the Senate, the electoral commission and the constitutional court, and said elections could take up to two years. That is a coup, not a democratic transition. In three of four cases, leaderless movements handed power to precisely the kind of establishment figures they had risen against, because they had no organisational vehicle capable of receiving power themselves.

Chenoweth and Cebul, citing their 2023 USAID report Youth and LGBTQ+ Participation in Nonviolent Action, note that they find no association between youth protest participation and subsequent improvement in youth unemployment. The structural grievances that produce the uprisings, corruption and joblessness and blocked opportunity, are precisely what a leader change does not fix on its own.

Nepal is the one clean counter-example so far. Kathmandu mayor Balen Shah left his post in January 2026, joined the Rastriya Swatantra Party, and led it to a 182-seat landslide in the 275-seat parliament in the March 2026 general election. On 27 March 2026 he was sworn in as Nepal’s youngest ever elected prime minister at age 36 (Al Jazeera, March 2026). The lesson isn’t encouraging: youth energy converted into governing power only where it built an actual political vehicle. Everywhere else, the old elites were still there to catch the fallen crown.

None of this diminishes what a generation accomplished. It sharpens the question about what comes next. The movements got the leaders out. Whether they get the structures out is the work of the decade that follows.

What this generation just proved to the rest of us

Three things are now true that were not true five years ago, and every serious commentator on generations has to sit with them.

First, they proved leaderless organising can produce measurable political outcomes at national scale. Not Twitter theatre, not campus performance, not brand activism. Actual regime change in four countries and forced policy reversal in a dozen more. The default assumption that leaderless movements are inherently weak is now empirically wrong.

Second, they proved transnational identity is a functional political force. The Straw Hat flag flying from Madagascar to Peru to Nepal is not a meme. It is a signal that this cohort recognises itself across borders, across languages, across regime types, in a way earlier generations rarely could. When a Filipino protester in Manila and a Malagasy protester in Antananarivo raise the same flag from a Japanese manga, something has changed about how political solidarity works.

Third, they proved the “disengaged” narrative was a category error. What was measured as disengagement was often preparation. What was called apathy was often exit until the conditions changed. When those conditions changed, this generation showed up harder and faster than anyone forecasting the future of protest predicted.

The honest question is not whether this generation is capable. That question was answered in Kathmandu, in Dhaka, in Colombo, and in Antananarivo. The honest question is what happens the next time they decide something needs to end.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many governments has Gen Z actually toppled between 2022 and 2025?

Four national governments: Sri Lanka (July 2022, Aragalaya), Bangladesh (August 2024, July Uprising), Nepal (September 2025, Gen Z protests), and Madagascar (October 2025, CAPSAT-backed transition). Carnegie’s Global Protest Tracker documents the broader wave across more than seventy countries in 2025 alone.

Was the Nepal Discord Prime Minister vote real?

Yes and no. A Discord server with over 100,000 members hosted deliberations and polls that shaped the political consensus for the interim leadership. It did not formally elect Sushila Karki; that happened through constitutional process. But the platform functioned as a de facto participatory forum during a crisis when no elected body was functioning, which is unprecedented.

Is Gen Z really more protest-active than previous generations?

Not really. Erica Chenoweth and Matthew Cebul found that roughly 80 percent of maximalist nonviolent campaigns worldwide from 1990 to 2020 featured substantial youth participation. Youth-led protest is the norm across decades. What is genuinely new is the leaderless design, the transnational symbol-sharing, and the speed of diffusion via Discord and TikTok.

What happens after a Gen Z revolution?

Historically, power reverts to old elites or the military because leaderless movements cannot field candidates or negotiate. Bangladesh handed power to Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, Nepal to former chief justice Sushila Karki, Madagascar to a colonel. The one clean electoral conversion so far is Nepal’s Balen Shah, whose RSP won 182 of 275 parliament seats in March 2026.

Did the Gen Z protests actually improve youth unemployment or living conditions?

Not yet. Chenoweth and Cebul, citing their 2023 USAID report on youth participation in nonviolent action, find no association between youth protest participation and subsequent improvement in youth unemployment. Structural change takes longer than regime change. The movements got the leaders out. Getting the structures out is the harder task ahead.

What the receipts actually show

Four governments toppled. Seventy countries with anti-government protests in a single year. A Discord server helping shape a national political transition. A manga flag flying across four continents. A generation the mainstream media said was too online to organise, too soft to build, too disengaged to matter, has just reset the political map of half a dozen countries.

The uncomfortable finding is that toppling isn’t enough. Old elites keep catching the crown. Youth unemployment has not moved. The structures that produced the grievances are still there. And yet the accomplishment is undeniable: this generation, in these conditions, with these tools, did what no serious commentator would have predicted five years ago.

The honest question is not whether they are capable. Kathmandu answered that. Dhaka answered that. Colombo and Antananarivo answered that. The honest question is what the rest of us do with the evidence now that it is on the table.

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Sources

About the Author

Vivek Iyyani. 4x Author | Keynote Speaker | Multigenerational Workforce Expert

Vivek Iyyani is a 4x published author and keynote speaker who has trained over 100 companies across Asia on managing multigenerational teams. His books on Gen Z and Millennials in the workplace have been featured across major media in Singapore and the APAC region. He helps leaders build the kind of workplaces where every generation wants to stay and grow.

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About the Author Vivek Iyyani

VIVEK IYYANI is a Generational Specialist at Millennial Minds. He is an award-winning author of 4 books, namely “Empowering Millennials”, “Engaging Millennials”, “The Millennial Leader” and “Marketing to Millennials”. He has spoken at organisations like Brunei Government, Paypal, Oracle, Booking.com, Singapore General Hospital, and many more. He has been featured by the National Population and Talent Division (NPTD) under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to feature in a video of #MySingaporeStory. He has also appeared on CNBC and Channel NewsAsia as a guest on the Gen Z topic. Vivek is known in his industry to speak at conferences on how the Generational Gap is influencing Marketing, Branding, and Leadership.

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