Structural Grievances and Digital Mobilization: The 2025 Gen Z Uprising in Nepal

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Youth Politics (Table 3)

Abstract

The September 2025 Gen Z uprising in Nepal marked a critical turning point in the country’s contemporary political trajectory, signaling the emergence of a digitally mediated, leaderless youth movement operating outside traditional party structures. This paper examines the key factors that triggered the uprising through close participatory observation conducted in Kathmandu and qualitative analysis of digital mobilization patterns. The immediate catalyst for the movement was the government’s decision on September 4, 2025, to ban 26 social media platforms, including Facebook and WhatsApp, citing non-compliance with the Social Media Management Directive 2080. Widely perceived as an authoritarian restriction on digital freedoms, the ban galvanized Nepal’s Generation Z, for whom online platforms constitute essential spaces of political expression and collective identity formation. This digital grievance converged with the viral #NepoBaby and #NepoKids trends, which symbolically exposed perceived nepotism by contrasting the affluent lifestyles of political elites’ children with the widespread unemployment, economic precarity, and forced migration experienced by ordinary youth. State repression escalated tensions, resulting in the deadliest single day in Nepal’s modern democratic history, with at least 75 fatalities and over 2,000 injuries. Protesters subsequently targeted key state institutions, reflecting a profound crisis of political legitimacy. The uprising culminated in the resignation of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on September 9, 2025, and an unprecedented experiment in digital participatory leadership selection through a youth-led online poll named Discord server. The paper argues that the 2025 uprising was not merely a reaction to a policy decision but the outcome of accumulated structural grievances, including institutional corruption, governance failures, generational marginalization, and shrinking civic space. By situating the movement within broader debates on digital activism, youth political agency, and democratic legitimacy in the Global South, this study contributes to emerging scholarship on how digitally networked generations reshape political authority in transitional democracies.

Authors

• Jhakendra Gharti Magar, Tribhuvan University, Patan Multiple Campus, Department of Sociology

• Urika Thapa, Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University