OPINION | Everyone is asking the wrong question about Gen Z

The headlines have become predictable.

“Why is Gen Z so angry?”

Television panels debate it. Newspaper columns analyse it. Social media dissects it. Every protest, every confrontation, and every campus movement is presented as fresh evidence that this generation is uniquely impatient, restless, and outraged.

I think we’re asking the wrong question.

The real question isn’t why Gen Z is angry. It’s why we’re pretending that anger belongs to them alone.

The other day, a young Gen Z colleague asked me what I thought about the recent student protests. She probably expected me to weigh in on the politics.

Instead, I said: “I feel sorry for your generation.”

She looked puzzled. “Why?” she asked.

Not because I believed their anger was misplaced. Quite the opposite. I recognised it instantly. I had seen it before. I had lived it.

I’m from Generation X. We marched, argued, challenged authority, and genuinely believed we could change the country. Before us, another generation confronted the Emergency. Before that, young Indians fought colonial rule. Every generation has found its own reason to rebel. The slogans evolve. The anger doesn’t.

What has changed is not the emotion. It is the volume.

Gen Z doesn’t experience injustice in silence. Every grievance is amplified within minutes. Every protest is livestreamed. Every slogan becomes a hashtag. Earlier generations shouted in college campuses and street corners. Today’s generation speaks into millions of phones at once.

That makes their anger visible, not necessarily greater.

During our conversation, my colleague said something that stayed with me.

“We’ve only seen this government.”

It was an honest remark. Every generation tends to believe the government of its time is the source of all its frustrations. Governments certainly deserve scrutiny. Democracies depend on it. But not every failure begins in Parliament, and not every solution ends with an election.

Take the examination paper leaks.

Public outrage is justified. Careers are destroyed, trust is shattered and young people are left wondering whether merit still matters.

But every leaked paper also forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth. Corruption doesn’t survive because governments exist. It survives because someone is willing to buy what someone else is willing to sell.

Governments can arrest culprits. They cannot legislate integrity.

Change the government tomorrow and, unless society changes with it, another paper will leak, another investigation will begin, and another generation will be told to wait.

History has taught my generation another lesson.

Student movements have often nudged India in the right direction. They have exposed injustice, challenged complacency and forced those in power to listen. But they have also been fertile ground for political opportunism.

I know because I have watched it happen. Young people pour idealism into a movement. Political parties arrive with slogans, microphones and promises. They applaud the protests while they are useful. Some even march alongside them. But when governments change and power shifts, many of those promises quietly disappear. The movement moves on. The politicians move into office. The students are left with memories.

That is why I feel sorry for Gen Z.

Not because they are protesting. Not because they are angry.

I feel sorry because I hope they never discover what many of us eventually did—that youthful idealism is politics’ favourite raw material. It is easy to borrow and painfully difficult to reclaim.

So keep protesting. Question authority. Challenge institutions. Demand accountability. Democracies need young citizens who refuse to accept comfortable lies.

But protect something even more precious than your anger: your independence!

The day your movement begins serving someone else’s political ambition, it stops serving your future.

India has never suffered from a shortage of angry generations. My hope is that Gen Z becomes the first to prove that anger can transform society without allowing society or politics to transform them.

The author is a senior journalist.