From the Arab Spring to Gen Z: How Morocco’s Youth Are Redefining Activism

By Elena Natali

Youths have always been the spark of social change, but no generation has expressed that spark quite like Gen Z.

In Morocco, a wave of young protesters is challenging inequality, corruption, and the failures of public institutions. Their mobilization feels familiar – echoes of the Arab Spring ring in their chants – but their methods, mindset, and means of organization are something entirely new.
Born into a world of economic, environmental, and political crisis, Gen Z has grown up both disillusioned and hyperconnected.
In Morocco, this generation refuses to stay silent as opportunities vanish and the promise of social mobility collapses. Across the country, students and young professionals have taken to the streets, denouncing a system that seems designed to exclude them.
The grievances are clear: public education and healthcare are crumbling, while the cost of private schooling is not affordable to middle-class families, whose average salary barely exceeds 680 USD.

The straw that broke the camel’s back occurred at the end of this September, when the death of several pregnant women during routine C-sections in Agadir highlighted the tragic conditions of Moroccan public healthcare. This event led to the explosion of massive protests throughout Morocco. From the capital to rural cities, Gen Z demands change.

Unlike the more traditional uprisings of the early 2010s, the Gen Z’s protests that started in September were born  online. There are no central committees, charismatic leaders, nor headquarters. A single post on TikTok, Telegram, or Discord – with Discord being the platform where the movement first gained momentum – mobilised thousands of people within hours.
As a result, these digital channels do more than disseminate information; they cultivate networks of trust and shape a shared collective identity.
During the Arab Spring, social media played a groundbreaking role. Facebook pages such as We Are All Khaled Said in Egypt and strategic Twitter hashtags in Tunisia helped coordinate rallies and amplify dissent. Yet, access to the internet was still limited, and governments retained control over mainstream narratives through traditional media.
Fully aware of these facts, Moroccan authorities reacted immediately and forcefully to suppress the Gen Z-led movement. According to the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH), heavy-handed policing has been accompanied by legal and institutional repression, including preventive bans, intimidation, disinformation campaigns, and online smear operations, clear attempts to turn public opinion against the protesters.
However, in an era where information crosses the globe in seconds, protest culture has fundamentally evolved, and propaganda alone is therefore no longer sufficient to neutralise a leaderless, horizontally organised movement. Whereas the Arab Spring centred on physical occupation of symbolic public spaces – such as Cairo’s Tahrir Square or Tunis’s Avenue Bourguiba – today’s activism is hybrid.
The streets remain vital, but digital platforms have become equally political arenas.
In Morocco, young people used social media to document police violence, share footage instantly, and generate international solidarity, while online petitions, viral videos, and mass boycotts exerted pressure without a single banner being raised.

Yet, digital mobilisation faces its own limitations: online outrage can be short-lived, and without structured leadership, movements risk fragmentation, and the State’s response underscored this tension between physical and digital dissent.
Violations of human rights were reported: heavy deployment of security forces by the Moroccan Government, prosecution of activists for “inciting to protest” or “undermining institutions” – just to name a few.
Furthermore, during arrests linked to the Gen Z protests, authorities systematically confiscated phones and accessed their contents without authorization, an explicit violation of personal data protection laws.
It may therefore seem premature to conclude that Gen Z’s strategy could yield more lasting results than the Arab Spring movements on a domestic level. Digital activism is more resilient – deleted videos resurface, censored hashtags evolve – but it remains vulnerable to fatigue and disinformation.

Still, something has shifted. Whether because of a different political climate or a collective memory of 2011’s implications, Gen Z’s activism in Morocco has managed to achieve institutional responses. In fact, the “Moroccan Spring” proved to last shorter than expected, as public demands were seeking reform rather than revolution and were rapidly managed by the authorities. In the wake of the protests, the government pledged reforms, including nearly USD 13 million in the 2026 draft finance bill to improve healthcare and education, as well as the creation of more than 27,000 jobs in those sectors.
Whether these measures signal meaningful change or simply a temporary appeasement remains uncertain, but they nonetheless reflect the movement’s influence.
Morocco’s Gen Z has come of age in an algorithmic era, transforming protest from a one-day event into a sustained ecosystem of content, dialogue, and creativity. This generation no longer depends on journalists or political parties to frame their narrative; they record, edit, and circulate their own stories in real time.
Leaderless yet interconnected, the movement is harder to censor and strikingly adaptive, turning activism from a fleeting moment into an ongoing civic conversation, one in which outrage has the room to mature into organization.
And, in doing so, Morocco’s Gen Z may be shaping a new model of political engagement for the digital age.