Generation Z youth in the Iranian protests: Characteristics, trends and impacts

By the end of December 2025, Iran was hit by a wave of protests and demonstrations triggered by a sharp depreciation of its currency. The continuous devaluation of the rial has severely eroded people’s savings, and simultaneously led to surging food prices and hyperinflation. Despite the relevant control measures adopted by the Iranian government, the protests and demonstrations quickly spread to most parts of the country and evolved into broader political demands, including calls for an end to the rule of the Islamic Republic. Amid this upheaval, Iran’s Generation Z has emerged as one of the most notable and active groups in the protests, whose characteristics, evolving trends and far-reaching impacts merit in-depth attention and research.

I. Characteristics of Generation Z Youth Protesters in Iran

First, university campuses have served as the primary organizational hubs of the protests. Despite the absence of a unified national leader, student unions and societies across various universities have held gatherings on campus and expressed solidarity with the social protests. It is reported that universities involved in on-campus mobilization include the University of Tehran, Shahid Beheshti University, Sharif University of Technology, among others. Additionally, the Amirkabir Newsletter has become a key online network for the mobilization of Iranian students, having tracked and covered protests in Iranian higher education institutions for decades.

Second, the slogans of the protests are diverse and radicalized. The protests in Iran were sparked by an economic crisis, yet they quickly gave rise to broader political slogans and anti-establishment demands. Refined and disseminated by Generation Z, the protest slogans have taken on a character of diversity and radicalization. According to reported video footage, the prominent slogans of the protests to date include: “Neither the Pahlavis nor the Supreme Leader; Freedom and Equality”; “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, My Life for Iran”; “Long Live the Shah” and “Death to the Dictator”. This reflects Generation Z’s resentment toward the Iranian government’s foreign policy of “exporting the revolution”—they believe that resources that should belong to them have been squandered on proxy wars, which is the direct cause of their current poverty.

Third, Generation Z has participated in the protests through a combination of online and offline approaches. Despite the Iranian government’s internet shutdown measures, Generation Z youth have continued to find alternative ways to disseminate information externally, such as adopting technical means to circumvent internet restrictions, leveraging the communication chains of expatriates and overseas media, and accessing the limited available Starlink nodes. In organizing protests, however, they have mostly reverted to offline activities: university dormitories, canteens and other such spaces have become venues where young people exchange and circulate information.

Fourth, Generation Z women have emerged as the main force of the protests. A key feature of women’s protests in Iran is that they are not confined to any age group. In 2022, Iran was engulfed in the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, a nationwide movement sparked by the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the so-called “morality police”. This movement ultimately led to what many regard as the biggest concession made by the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979—de facto abandonment of the mandatory hijab rule in most parts of the country. Since then, women removing and burning their hijabs has become an iconic act, with Generation Z women at the forefront of the movement. They have propelled gender issues from the margins to the core of public discourse and challenged the religious conservative forces’ control over women’s bodies.

Fifth, Generation Z youth have also actively sought overseas support, particularly from influential celebrities and anti-Iranian government NGOs. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), in exile in France, has long advocated the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Amid the current wave of protests, the organization has covered the domestic protests in Iran through its official websites and social media channels, and has also coordinated with Western human rights organizations and overseas Iranian anti-government figures to hold rallies in solidarity with the protests inside Iran.

II. Trends of Generation Z Youth Protesters in Iran

First, the protests by Generation Z youth have become a global phenomenon, exerting a profound impact on the political stability of numerous countries. Since the outbreak of the Arab Spring in late 2010, social media has ceased to be merely a tool for social interaction and entertainment, and has officially emerged as a core carrier for the emergence, organization and dissemination of political movements. This has ushered in a global era of social media-driven political movements, which has become a central research topic in the study of international relations and social movements. In particular, youth-led protests have surged in recent years, with large-scale anti-government protests breaking out in countries such as Sri Lanka (2022); Bangladesh, Kenya and Serbia (2024); and Indonesia, Madagascar, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines and Timor-Leste (2025). For Iran, bolstered by social media, Generation Z has played a pivotal role in the country’s successive waves of protests: those in 2017–2018, 2019 and 2022, as well as the ongoing protests that began in December 2025.

Second, for many Generation Z young people in Iran, the driving force behind their protest participation is not so much political ideology as frustration with everyday life. In other words, the reason these young people take to the streets to protest stems less from ideological motives and more from a desire to live a “normal life”—such as opposing the mandatory hijab rule, resisting the morality police’s interference in private spheres, and demanding that the government address sky-high inflation and youth unemployment. On the one hand, these young people have seen the world in the internet age, with the belief that “we are connected to the whole world”. Yet the growing gulf between their global perspectives and the limited economic, social and political opportunities available domestically in Iran has led them to combine their economic grievances with broader demands for dignity, freedom and the chance to live a normal life.

Third, yet Iran’s Generation Z youth lack a clear leader, and their movement is largely organized in a decentralized structure. At present, the majority of online discourse about Iran originates outside the country, driven primarily by Iranian expatriates and overseas figures. Dissident media outlets, both within and outside Iran, function mostly as critical channels, fueling widespread criticism of the Iranian regime. As such, relevant coverage also bears the hallmarks of the cognitive warfare waged by the United States and Israel. In reality, the overall tone of Iranian state media remains relatively restrained. Furthermore, Iran currently lacks a unified opposition group capable of forming a government. The opposition is mainly composed of four factions: the National Council of Iran led by Reza Pahlavi; the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) and its affiliated National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) led by Maryam Rajavi; the Hamgami Coalition for a Secular Democratic Republic of Iran; and ethnic minorities in Iran, including Kurds and Balochs. These opposition groups, both domestic and international, act independently with disparate objectives: some have clear leaders, while others do not. Inside Iran itself, no single figure has yet emerged from the ongoing protests to become a widely recognized opposition leader.

III.The Impacts of Generation Z Youth Protesters on Iran’s Political Landscape

According to current reports, the Iranian government’s tough social control measures have stabilized the situation, yet the protests have not come to a complete end. The Iranian regime remains in a highly fragile “window of vulnerability”, facing dual internal and external pressures. On the one hand, domestic protests are still ongoing, and the economic crisis is unlikely to be resolved in the short term. On the other hand, it is under all-round external pressure: (1) The threat of military strikes by the United States and Israel, with former US President Donald Trump threatening that the US would launch military intervention if the Iranian regime further escalates its crackdown. (2) The cognitive and public opinion warfare waged by Western media: most Western media outlets, along with Western leaders, have condemned the Iranian government’s violent suppression of the protests and hyped narratives such as “the imminent collapse of the Iranian regime”.

In the short term, the risk of the collapse of Iran’s incumbent regime remains low, attributable to the following key reasons: (1) Through measures such as internet shutdowns and coercive law enforcement, the Iranian government is still able to maintain basic social stability, and no obvious rifts have emerged within the Shiite clerical leadership, the military, police and security agencies. (2) The protests lack unified leadership, with divisions existing even among Iran’s Generation Z itself; the government’s internet shutdown measures have also weakened the protesters’ capacity for mobilization and coordination. (3) The Iranian government has adopted a two-pronged strategy to address external pressures: while the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent a signal to the United States of “negotiating on the basis of mutual respect”, it has also stressed the need to “be fully prepared for war” and framed the narrative of the protests as a “national security incident caused by external interference”.

However, it is crucial to remain vigilant that even if Iran weathers this wave of protests, the fundamental issues that triggered the unrest remain unresolved. The United States and Israel are highly likely to seize on Iran’s turbulent situation to launch another surgical military strike against the country, which would in turn trigger Iran’s asymmetric retaliation and further destabilize the situation in the Middle East.