Nepal, Sept. 18 -- Until last Monday, the day the Gen Z protests began, I was quite unaware of 'Nepo Baby' and 'Nepo Kids' as a social media phenomenon in Nepal. I had certainly seen references to the terms in the course of keeping up with the planned demonstrations by the young ones. But that these had riled passions to such an extent was something many oldies like me may have missed. Which says a lot about how out of touch most of us from the earlier generations, including our politician-rulers, are with what is happening in the digital sphere.

Demographic cohorts such as Baby Boomers and the Gen X, the older groupings of the West so called for having been shaped by historical events in their part of the world, had hardly anything in c...