Gen Z: screen habits reshaped as political tactics

L'ADN reports that Generation Z is routinely described as anxious and numbed by its phones, yet the same generation uses gaming, fandom and troll culture as political tactics, from Kathmandu to Belgrade. The report does not detail specific campaigns, figures or timelines, so what follows stays at the level of pattern rather than case study.

The observation is not new in itself. What the report puts forward is a reframing: the behaviours adults read as distraction are, in some contexts, organisational skills. That distinction matters for anyone whose business depends on reaching this audience.

What the screen actually teaches

Fandom is a coordination system. People learn to track a shared story, react in real time, produce content around it and defend it against outsiders. Trolling, whatever one thinks of it, is also a form of rapid response: reading a room, testing a message, adapting fast. Gaming adds a layer of distributed teamwork under pressure, often across borders and languages.

The report does not claim these skills are good or bad. It simply notes they exist and that they can be redirected. Brands tend to borrow the aesthetics of these cultures without the underlying mechanics: a meme format here, a Discord server there, with no real participation. The result reads as extraction, and audiences are quick to spot it.

What a team can check this week

Rather than treating Gen Z as a demographic to target, treat it as a set of practices to understand. A few questions worth asking internally:

• Does your content assume passive viewing, or does it leave room for people to remix it, comment on it and defend it?
• Are the people managing your community actually inside the cultures you claim to speak to, or reading about them second-hand?
• When criticism comes, is your reflex to moderate it away or to answer in the same register the audience uses?

None of these questions has a universal answer, and the L'ADN report does not offer one. But they expose the gap between cosmetic adaptation and real fluency.

Why it matters for acquisition and monetisation

The practical consequence is about trust. Communities formed around gaming and fandom are unusually good at detecting insincerity, which means paid reach alone rarely converts them. Organic participation, creator relationships built over time and a genuine willingness to be talked back to tend to do more work than a polished campaign.

On the monetisation side, the same logic applies to pricing and funnels. A generation used to free-to-play mechanics, in-game economies and community-driven value understands the difference between a fair trade and a squeeze. Offers that rely on confusion tend to spread fast, and not in the intended direction.

The report leaves the question of outcomes open. What it does suggest is that dismissing screen-native behaviour as apathy is a poor reading of the evidence. For teams, the safer assumption is that this audience is organised, watching closely and willing to act, including against brands that get it wrong.