The Finance Bill 2024 is turning out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Ordinarily the camel – a beast of burden – denotes the overworked mostly older population. But the people on the streets protesting against the Finance Bill are younger; most of them Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, and the media is being accused of obsessing with their age more than why they’re protesting.
For a country accustomed to opposition leaders calling for demonstrations consisting of millennials and Gen X, it is understandable why the media may seem more enthusiastic about Gen Z protesting and present the coverage in a manner that may belittle them. This is especially true because this demographic has long been disregarded as excessively focused on social media and superficial content, lacking concern for important societal issues. Consequently, it was unsurprising to see most media reports leading with phrases like “Gen Z this” and “Gen Z that” concerning the protests.
One Mwende Kyalo posted on Facebook, highlighting the dehumanisation of the young protestors in the media. Kyalo questioned why the protests were being framed as a Gen Z issue and why this bothered her. She narrated that that after watching multiple TV interviews and reading various articles, she realised that none of them clearly discussed the tax issue. The corruption and excessive government spending, which were important aspects, had been completely ignored. The media seemed so fixated on the protestors’ age that they failed to stress why Gen Z was leading these protests. And we largely agree with her perspective.
If you quickly observe the newspaper coverage you will see that the media has indeed captured the reasons for these protests and even why the Gen Z are leading it. In fact, some media houses have invited some of the leaders from this demographic for lengthy interviews that have clearly captured the why. So, why does it feel as though the media is infantilising these protests?
According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, infantilising somebody means treating them as though they are a child. So, has the media treated the Finance Bill 2024 protests as if the protestors were children or lacking maturity?
While we think the coverage of these protests has addressed the issues important to the protestors, there has also been moments where we could agree the media infantilised these protests. This has been especially obvious in the questions around their ability to organise or sustain the protests and scepticism about whether these young people truly understand what they are protesting and an excessive focus on their age.
The media should perhaps learn from this and resist the urge to prioritise novelty as the news value when covering these protests, instead emphasising impact. Otherwise, each generation will continue to undermine the one that follows.
Frank Furedi, a prominent sociologist, argues in his book “Why Borders Matter” that millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) have undergone a prolonged transition to adulthood not due to inherent generational flaws but because of broader societal changes regarding boundaries and discipline.
This is instructive here because the infantilisation of Gen Z has been attributed to their obsession with vanity dressed in technology, and since technology will continue to reorganise our societies, we should remain alert to what that does to a generation and how to plug into that world rather than become dismissive.
