13 Feb 2026 | Africa, Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Features, France, Kenya, Madagascar, Nepal, United Kingdom
This article first appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of Index on Censorship, Gen Z is revolting: Why the world’s youth will not be silenced, published on 18 December 2025.
Gen Z are in revolt. In Kenya, in Madagascar, in Nepal, young people are exercising their freedom of expression, taking to the streets and demanding change. They are at times being silenced with force, at other times with subtlety.
As a team of predominantly non-Gen Z people, we spoke with young people from across the world to better understand how they see themselves. How free are their voices? Do they have hope for the future? Are we all doomed?
We talked to a young man from France, who described the hate and division he sees online, particularly targeted at men, with far-right politicians using memes and AI-generated videos to spread or soften hateful rhetoric. Marine Le Pen petting cats, for instance.
He believes social collapse is coming. In a country like France, with its strong record of demonstrations, it is shocking to hear him say that protests make no difference. They are dangerous places to be, where police use weapons against those raising their voices. People are fed up, and politicians are out of touch. In his words, “the Boomer generation is fucking us up”. What is most striking is that he doesn’t feel he can say any of this in public. Politics has become too divisive.
He described a landscape where young people are struggling to even pay grocery bills, and politicians aren’t listening. At the same time, he and his peers are trying to find meaning, a reason for being on the planet. Their issues are existential. In the UK too, people struggle to get jobs, to meet rising costs, and to afford a home.
The same is true in Finland, where a woman in her mid-twenties told us about her experiences. She said she is scared for the future.
While her social media algorithm is full of lifestyle influencers and calming content, she has witnessed a growing conservatism among the lower age bracket of Gen Z on TikTok. Her peers are cautious about saying anything that might get them cancelled, while she sees a slew of right-wing views from those in their mid-teens.
Here in the UK, our editorial assistant (and resident Gen Zer) Connor O’Brien has seen “young men being pumped with manosphere content”. He approached a number of Reform UK voters, keen to hear their perspectives, but none of them were willing to talk to Index.
Students from Ukraine, Palestine, Afghanistan and Malaysia joined us for a round table discussion about why Gen Z is in revolt. They talked about the bravery of Gen Z, growing up in the wake of the Arab Spring, and the feeling of having nothing left to lose. That, they said, is how revolutions start. They too agreed – the older generations have failed them, and the world is going to burn. Why wouldn’t they revolt?
They described what makes Gen Z distinct. The huge step change in their access to information, the way they consume media and how they share their opinions. Through the power of the internet, their generation has been shaped by global connection.
They also discussed how it’s impossible to generalise for a whole generation. They’re right, and even the views we heard were only a small sample. The Frenchman does not represent all of France, nor the Finnish woman all of Finland.
A recent report for Demos by Shuab Gamote and Peter Hyman, who interviewed hundreds of British 16-18 year olds, demonstrated just that. For starters, the 15-28 age bracket (as of 2025) is simply too wide. They focused their research on 15-18 year olds as the future change-makers. They also designed five archetypes, which the young people they spoke with felt represented them well. They are the activist (left-wing, cares about climate change, deeply principled), the entrepreneur (believes in meritocracy), the critical realist (apathetic or anti-establishment, questioning of everything), the traditionalist (right-leaning, patriotic) and the connector (disengaged from political discussions and interested in pop culture).
The media and, if we’re honest, those of us outside the Gen Z age bracket, have made some quick assumptions about who is influencing young people today. It must be Andrew Tate. The news tells us this, television dramas tell us this, and we probably tell it to each other. But, according to Gamote and Hyman’s research, “Tate is dead.” Figuratively.
When they mentioned Tate in their sessions, students rolled their eyes. Instead, young people in the UK are being influenced by five key types of social media star: entertainers, adult content creators, news explainers, right-wing thinkers and left-wing voices. Gender is a huge dividing line, shaping young people’s views.
“Young people today are immersed in a constant stream of content,” they said. “Young people are not following one person’s ‘ideology’. They follow and are ‘influenced’ by tens if not hundreds of creators. Their feeds are shaped by algorithms, not loyalty.”
The students at our round table echoed this, describing an ever-spinning carousel of influencers, who hold their attention for a week or so. One spoke about the gentle path of breadcrumbs – first a funny video, and then a bait and switch to far-right ideology, or videos of angry people shouting at hotels in Epping which they are being pushed because they live in Essex. For the women, “trad wives” content had made its way onto their feeds.
All this is about a fight for the future; for the youth protesters, for the young men demanding patriotic values and for the powerful seeking to gain influence on the young. From the Millennial, Gen X and Boomer sidelines, it might look like that future is hopeless. But Gen Z have a binary choice. It’s all or nothing.
21 Feb 2023 | News, Russia, Ukraine
Immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov loudly announced the active involvement of Chechen security forces in it. Units of the Russian army and the Interior Ministry for Chechnya, which de facto report to Kadyrov personally, lined the grounds of his residence in the centre of the Chechen capital. Kadyrov said at the time that 12,000 Chechen volunteers were ready to leave for any special operation in the interests of Russia.
Since then, various sources have claimed that about 200 Chechens have been killed. The figure for the number of Chechens fighting for Russia is about 10,000 according to Kadyrov. Russian human rights activists put the number at around 3,000.
In September 2022 several women decided to organise a demonstration against sending Chechens to join Russia’s war. In a voice message that circulated on social media at the time, the organisers called on people to come to the central square of the city of Grozny: “They killed us in two wars, aren’t there enough dead, mutilated and crippled?” the woman in the message asks. On the same day, Kadyrov said on his Telegram channel that the women had been detained, a preventive conversation was held with them, and he promised to send their sons to fight in Ukraine.
This was something of an understatement. The human rights group Memorial has since confirmed that the women were taken to Grozny’s City Hall and their husbands forced to beat them. The son of at least one of the women was sent to Ukraine and her husband died a few days later, seemingly of “a broken heart”.
This kind of harsh reaction had an effect: people became afraid to express their opinions, even in front of their long-time friends. Umar from Grozny says that recently a friend of his sent a meme about the war in Ukraine into a group chat room, and five minutes later deleted it. “This has never happened before, everyone knows everyone in this chat room and before the war everyone trusted each other,” said Umar.
That said, one activist of a Russian human rights organisation believes that the situation of free speech in Chechnya has changed, but not necessarily for the worse. She confirms that people are less likely to express their discontent with the authorities in public, but among trusted circles, criticism of the Chechen authorities has become harsher. She says that even those who used to be apolitical are now speaking out against the actions of the authorities. She believes that the people who fear that their sons who survived the Chechen wars or were born later will die in a new, “alien war”.
According to Marina, a 33-year-old who works at a public institution in Chechnya, “not a single lunch with friends goes by without talking about Ukraine”. She follows all the news from the front and cheers for Ukraine’s victory. Most of Marina’s friends also support Ukraine and want Russia to lose. When she and her friends discuss Ukraine in a café, everyone keeps asking each other to keep their voices down.
“Ukraine is going through the same thing we went through. The same rhetoric, only we were accused of being a nation of terrorists, while the Ukrainians are ‘Nazis’,” Marina said. She is sure that among Chechens there is no patriotism toward Russia. “Where does it come from?” she asked rhetorically.
“The Chechens we see on social networks and state channels talking about love for Russia are people who need something from the authorities. They pursue purely material goals.”
Marina personally knows Chechens who went to Ukraine for money but that was at the very beginning of the war (the minimum amount paid by the Russian government for participation in the war is 195,000 rubles monthly, about $2615),
Umar, 43, a courier from Grozny, tells of his neighbour who was sent to Ukraine recently. “He liked to drink and make noise. He was taken to prison and stayed there for several months. Then he was offered: either you go to Ukraine or we put you in jail for a long time. He agreed to Ukraine. I recently saw a picture of him standing somewhere in the Luhansk region of Ukraine, in a Russian military uniform, with a submachine gun in his hands”. According to Umar, there are many such cases.
There are also those in Chechnya who think differently and support Kadyrov’s army. These are mostly families of Chechens who are fighting on the side of Russia. “They are not rooting for Russia’s victory, but for their family members,” said Tamara, a 49-year-old housewife from a Chechen village. Those whose children have gone to fight in Ukraine sincerely want them to return home and support them. These parents need to explain to themselves that their sons are not risking their lives for nothing, and they speak “the language of television” Tamara said. Most of their rhetoric boils down to a line they’ve been told that Russia was forced to attack and that “the (Russian) government isn’t stupid”.
For the residents of Grozny, which was rebuilt after almost total destruction in the early 2000s, today they live ordinary, peaceful lives. As in other Russian cities, there is almost no indication that the country is waging an aggressive war against its neighbour. It is almost the same war Russia waged against Chechnya in the 1990s and 2000s when it fought for independence. The graffiti on the walls that used to say “Welcome to hell”, left for the Russian soldiers by Chechen fighters for independence, has been replaced by murals depicting Kadyrov and his men. But there is little faith in the sincerity of Kadyrov’s love for the Russian leadership. Marina says:
“Kadyrov has no patriotism for Russia. All he protects is his position and his stability.”
This article is written by a journalist from Chechnya. For their safety they wished to remain anonymous and excluded identifying features of those they spoke to as well
25 Jan 2023 | Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Botswana, Burma, China, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Index Index, Ireland, Laos, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Netherlands, News, Nicaragua, North Korea, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Switzerland, Syria, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United States, Yemen
A major new global ranking index tracking the state of free expression published today (Wednesday, 25 January) by Index on Censorship sees the UK ranked as only “partially open” in every key area measured.
In the overall rankings, the UK fell below countries including Australia, Israel, Costa Rica, Chile, Jamaica and Japan. European neighbours such as Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Denmark also all rank higher than the UK.
The Index Index, developed by Index on Censorship and experts in machine learning and journalism at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), uses innovative machine learning techniques to map the free expression landscape across the globe, giving a country-by-country view of the state of free expression across academic, digital and media/press freedoms.
Key findings include:
-
The countries with the highest ranking (“open”) on the overall Index are clustered around western Europe and Australasia – Australia, Austria, Belgium, Costa Rica, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland.
-
The UK and USA join countries such as Botswana, Czechia, Greece, Moldova, Panama, Romania, South Africa and Tunisia ranked as “partially open”.
-
The poorest performing countries across all metrics, ranked as “closed”, are Bahrain, Belarus, Burma/Myanmar, China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Laos, Nicaragua, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
-
Countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates performed poorly in the Index Index but are embedded in key international mechanisms including G20 and the UN Security Council.
Ruth Anderson, Index on Censorship CEO, said:
“The launch of the new Index Index is a landmark moment in how we track freedom of expression in key areas across the world. Index on Censorship and the team at Liverpool John Moores University have developed a rankings system that provides a unique insight into the freedom of expression landscape in every country for which data is available.
“The findings of the pilot project are illuminating, surprising and concerning in equal measure. The United Kingdom ranking may well raise some eyebrows, though is not entirely unexpected. Index on Censorship’s recent work on issues as diverse as Chinese Communist Party influence in the art world through to the chilling effect of the UK Government’s Online Safety Bill all point to backward steps for a country that has long viewed itself as a bastion of freedom of expression.
“On a global scale, the Index Index shines a light once again on those countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates with considerable influence on international bodies and mechanisms – but with barely any protections for freedom of expression across the digital, academic and media spheres.”
Nik Williams, Index on Censorship policy and campaigns officer, said:
“With global threats to free expression growing, developing an accurate country-by-country view of threats to academic, digital and media freedom is the first necessary step towards identifying what needs to change. With gaps in current data sets, it is hoped that future ‘Index Index’ rankings will have further country-level data that can be verified and shared with partners and policy-makers.
“As the ‘Index Index’ grows and develops beyond this pilot year, it will not only map threats to free expression but also where we need to focus our efforts to ensure that academics, artists, writers, journalists, campaigners and civil society do not suffer in silence.”
Steve Harrison, LJMU senior lecturer in journalism, said:
“Journalists need credible and authoritative sources of information to counter the glut of dis-information and downright untruths which we’re being bombarded with these days. The Index Index is one such source, and LJMU is proud to have played our part in developing it.
“We hope it becomes a useful tool for journalists investigating censorship, as well as a learning resource for students. Journalism has been defined as providing information someone, somewhere wants suppressed – the Index Index goes some way to living up to that definition.”
11 Oct 2022
What is the Index Index? The Index Index is a pilot project that uses innovative machine learning techniques to map the free expression landscape across the globe to gain a clearer country-by-country view of the state of free expression across academic, digital and...
