Russia’s Generation Z and the digital media effect

Young people in Russia don’t watch television anymore. Television isn’t where the action is. Whereas generations of Russians before them devoted countless hours to the TV set, depending on their programs for entertainment, culture, and news, the home base for Generation Z — those born from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s — is the Internet.

This internet coup has led to a slow but sure change in the behavior of today’s youth, the first true digital natives. In Russia the change slammed into the headlines this March, when young people showed up in droves to attend the largest protests in Russia in five years, coordinated — for the most part without legal authorization — in 99 cities across the country. These rallies were organized online and gained traction through a massively popular YouTube video made by Alexei Navalny — the besieged possible opposition candidate to President Vladimir Putin in next year’s election — outlining charges of corruption against Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.