How Gen Z is becoming a true force for social change

As someone interested in ideas and the history of their development, I found myself thinking a lot about the term Gen Z. Where did this label come from? What purpose does generational labelling serve? And, most importantly, what notions does the term Gen Z evoke in our minds and how does it shape our thinking?

The idea of a generation is an old one. However, its modern usage is often traced to two scholars, Karl Mannheim and Norman Ryder. In 1928, Mannheim wrote an essay titled, ‘The Problem of Generations’, arguing that being born at the same time is not enough to constitute a generation. Young people must also experience significant historical events that shape them into a cohesive age group. In 1965, Ryder wrote another influential essay called ‘The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change’. He observed that each new cohort enters society with a fresh perspective. As older cohorts pass on and younger ones take their place, society gradually changes.

Gen Z may sound like a sociological or demographic term for young people, but today it is perhaps better understood as a marketing invention. Corporations seeking to sell to or recruit the young have invested heavily in popularising the label. Their reports often assess this group in terms of its spending power, consumer preferences and attitudes towards work. Shaped by this approach, conversations about Gen Z have come to revolve largely around attitudes, fashion and slang. We hear about their clothes, memes and views on work-life balance, but far less about the challenges they face: scarce jobs, overbearing political systems, conservative social norms and the changes they seek. In India, the label can also obscure the differences of caste, class, gender and region that might shape young people’s lives far more profoundly than their shared birth years.

As I spent time in the company of my Gen Z friends, I found myself returning to Mannheim, who argued that people born around the same time share a “generation location”, but become a generation in a deeper sense when they confront common historical problems and respond to them collectively. I also revisited Ryder’s idea of younger cohorts as potential drivers of social change.

One of the most significant forms of protest in recent times has seen young people take to social media and streets against exam paper leaks. For them, a paper leak is not a minor administrative lapse. It can jeopardise years of preparation and wipe out a family’s savings.

Across the country, several forms of discontent are gathering momentum. Young people are angry about scarce jobs and shrinking freedoms. Workers are demanding fair wages and dignity. Women are fighting for safety on the streets, at workplaces, and in their homes. Rising prices remain a common concern. These struggles might once have remained separate, but I am glad to see them gradually finding common ground. Students are standing with workers, farmers with defenders of constitutional rights, and women’s groups with those fighting for jobs and freedom. People are reaching across divides of identity, class and even ideology. But this convergence remains far from sufficient. We need more of it. History, one might argue, demands it.

The pattern is not confined to India. Young people have led, or are leading, significant protests across the world. Are we witnessing a global movement or a generational reckoning? Perhaps neither, at least not yet. The grievances concern jobs, prices, fair exams, safety and freedom. They are not exclusive to the young; parents and older workers share many of them.

What young people may bring to these struggles, however, is what Ryder suggested: fresh eyes and less patience with hollow rhetoric and broken promises. Gen Z is tired of being reduced to a consumer category or source of online amusement. The current phase, as I witnessed on the streets of Delhi, is shaping them into a generation!

The writer is a member of the Rajya Sabha from the RJD.