Gen ZEE - A handy screw driver in the tool box

‘The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.’ - Edgar Allan Poe

In recent months the Gen Zee is making waves. They are on the lips of high and mighty, media anchors and headlines of magazines and newspapers. Most of these guys of Gen Zee fame or defame do not themselves know that they are ZEEEE.

Gen Z is generally defined as individuals born between 1997 and 2012. In today’s context this age group around (2024 to 2025) would be from13 years to 28 years or so. It has teens and young adults as a group.

They are also called as "digital natives" as this generation has grown up with technology like smartphones and the internet, leading to unique characteristics such as being digitally influenced.

In many countries, Generation Z youth are more likely to be diagnosed with intellectual disabilities and psychiatric disorders than older generations. Intellectual disability is a generalized neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant impairment in intellectual and adaptive functioning that is apparent during adolescence. Today even companies do not like to hire these people because they are very casual and do not want to work. In a recent report the CM of Goa said that unemployment in Goa is not because there are no jobs- it is because 20% of youth do not want to work!

Historical examples show indoctrination is often targeted at young people, particularly children and adolescents, because their minds are more impressionable and they are still developing their capacity for critical thinking. This period, from early childhood through the teenage years (roughly ages 6 to 20), is when individuals are most vulnerable to adopting beliefs and behaviours without questioning their validity, making them prime targets for ideological, political, or religious indoctrination.

This is a very tender and thus an impressionable age and ‘catch them young’ is a good way to define netting them into your fold.

Rabindranath Tagore, in his story "Homecoming," describes fourteen as a pivotal age of awakening and transition, where a boy experiences increasing curiosity and the complexity of emotions, marking a bittersweet stage between innocence and adult responsibility.

Rabindranath Tagore says ‘In this world of human affairs there is no worse nuisance than a boy at the age of fourteen. He is neither ornamental nor useful. If he talks with a childish lisp he is called a baby, and if he answers in a grown-up way he is called impertinent. It is easy to excuse the shortcomings of early childhood, but it is hard to tolerate even unavoidable lapses in a boy of fourteen.’

Even adults and policy makers can’t figure out where to place them in the pecking order of maturity. If a boy rapes a girl at 14 he is treated as a child or even if he kills someone while driving without driving licence he cannot be tried in the court of law! Yet some nations want voting age to be reduced to 16 years.

But people were smart enough more than a century ago when Hitler’s Nazi party started indoctrination of Germans very early. Mandatory membership for boys and girls aged 10 to 17 aimed to create loyal followers and future leaders of the Nazi party. This was a chunk out of Gen Z of those days.

Historical examples, such as the Khmer Rouge and Maoist China, targeted children and adolescents (ages 7–16 and 10–20) during periods of crisis and revolution to Mold them into obedient citizens cannot be ignored.

The modern-day Gen Z knows how to use a lap top and a smart phone. But using a smart phone does not make you smart- but that is what they think. Even the matured parents feel that their kid is brilliant as he can book air tickets in a jiffy or a hotel room quickly. He can order a pizza from Zomato or a book from Amazon- see you can’t and he can! I have already mentioned earlier that they have intelligence deficit. Or Intellectual disability.

But they spend almost a quarter of the day on mobile- chatting with God knows whom and about what. Texting or sexting or coexisting. They are great at SMS lingo and emojis. But is that being smart or useful? Smart is someone who is intelligent, quick-witted, or capable of rapid learning and understanding. Which smart phones don’t turn you into. Your phone could be smart but you may still be dumb. They are electronic or E warriors.

Easy to get influenced

Take this as the biggest handicap. If I can influence you easily, I am in fact manipulating your mind.

Let me explain how a century ago Germans the most intelligent people were fooled by Hitler and his cronies.
Joseph Goebbels used propaganda to establish and maintain the Nazi Party's control over Nazi Germany's public mind, media, and cultural life, from 1933 onwards. His techniques included creating internal and external enemies, manipulating media like radio and film, and spreading "big lies" that targeted specific groups, such as the Jews, to promote Nazi ideology and control public opinion. Remember the radio and print media or posters/handouts or at best films were the only ways to manipulate Germans who had great scientists, surgeons, researchers, physicists, engineers and musicians.

"The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never again escape from it," wrote Joseph Goebbels in his diary. And Adolph Hitler agreed.

His quote is often used to define power of lies.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Joseph Goebbels

Today information is in your hands literally

Gen Zee has known no world without the internet and smartphones, making them comfortable with technology and digital platforms. Smart phones get them information instantly that helps creating flash mobs.

Gen Z most often discovers products and ideas through social media and expects seamless blending of online and offline experiences.

They are more interested in belonging to an inclusive, supportive community. They are more politically and socially active, advocating for what they believe on social media.

Members of Generation Z are typically reliant on the Internet to research their options and to place orders or form opinions about issues. Their decisions are heavily influenced by trends promoted by "influencers" on social media, as well as the fear of missing out (FOMO) and peer pressure. The need to be "trendy" is a prime motivator.

The age of 14 is a period where teens become more interested in peer opinions, are developing complex thoughts and identity, and are more influenced by social media and trends, which can be considered a form of impressionability, particularly in terms of social and moral values.

“The problem with Gen Z is that they’ve set up this moral standard that they can’t even live up to! No one’s fooling anybody.” ― Matty Healy

Dissemination of misinformation – many influencers, despite lacking expertise, spread false information about health, politics, and social issues, leading to widespread disinformation. They person who wants to be a mind manipulator has to just identify the fault lines and exploit them.

Unfortunately, 2 out of 3 influencers don’t fact-check their posts before sharing. 2 out of 3! Let that sink in. It is like one blind man helping another blind man to cross a busy road!

Some of you may remember a scene from film ‘Bunti Aur Babli’ where a group of protestors come to a politicians house and say ‘hamari mangey poori karo’ upon being asked what the demands are they say ‘Angrezo Bharat Chchodo- inkalab zindabad.’ They are told that the British left in 1947!

Similar is the situation with this neo enlightened Gen zee.

Imagine when a girl protesting against Israel in an American university was shouting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, the press reporter asked, ‘which river’? She said ‘Ask the organisers.’
Audacity of woke. They have been paid to wake up!

An article in Campaign India says- ‘All Gen Z show vertical defiance and horizontal conformity, which means that they all show a desire to reject parental and societal values of appearance, gender expression, racism and caste-based discrimination. There is an inclination to define themselves as more open-minded and norm-divergent than the previous generation. Gen Z uses this progressiveness to signal wokeness, which for them has become the new social currency.’ To be called woke is in fashion. Now these new fashionable constructs called wokeism is actually derived from the word ‘woken up’ or ‘now I am aware’ since I have been shaken out of deep sleep (implied).

Activism is the new fashion statement

A few years ago, I met a young guy in his late teens and asked him what did he do? He proudly said ‘I am an activist’. What do you protest against? ‘Anything I feel is not right’. This is the state of affairs- a 17 year old , may be totally ill informed will protest just because ‘someone’ has told him what is wrong.

Screwdriver becomes the most powerful tool in the tool box

You need to have the play book and use them cunningly- they are there for you to use- yours obediently.
What more a political party or a non-entity who wants to come to lime light would require than this screwdriver called Gen Zee?

They can be influenced, manipulated, incited, mobilised at the drop of the hat. And in good numbers. They are in schools, colleges and canteens or in shopping malls or fast-food joints.

Use them for your good and then disappear from the seen. By then a few would have been killed, lynched, or burnt or stabbed and you got your eyeballs and a public opinion- just free of cost. Now social media is free for the perpetrator and Gen ZEEEE happily pays for the handphone and the call /data charges.

What is the way out?

There is no simple short answer for this. Governments, institutions and some- yes, some educational institutes are trying their best. But the Ginnie seems to be out of a coke bottle and no one seems to care.
Arab spring got the protesters a shit hole they themselves dug for themselves. What they got in Tunisia, Yemen and Syrian Civil War is for the world to see. Only way is educating these people and the buck stops at homes and colleges and schools.

Worst is yet to precipitate

Future does not look promising. They need to bootstrap themselves out of this messy thought process for their own good. Just writing on the T shirt “I am human” or I care for the planet does not take you far for sure.

The same ill informed, ill motivated and over enthusiastic generation may not turn out to be good citizens and some with these weird ideas will get into positions of power and will destroy their own nests.

“Nearly every novel problem teenager’s face trace itself back to 2007 and the introduction of Steve Jobs’s iPhone. In fact, the explosion in self-harm can be so precisely pinpointed to the introduction of this one device that researches have little doubt that it is the cause... The statistical explosion of bullying, cutting, anorexia, depression, and the rise of sudden transgender identification is owed to the self-harm instruction, manipulation, abuse, and relentless harassment supplied by a single smartphone.” ― Abigail Shrier- Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters