In the 21st century, civic engagement has forgotten the ballot boxes, town halls and the conventional meetings and moved to the online arena where millions of people are interconnected in real time. The cell phone is the new pamphlet, the trending hashtag the new slogan and Facebook Live the new jalsa. Social media is transforming the perspective of people, particularly youths, towards politics, protest and citizenship. In Pakistan, where there is a high number of youth and an increasing number of people using the internet, this change is radical. However, the question is, does social media enable democratic participation, or is there a danger of making politics a shallow clicktivism?
Since 2022 in Asia, Gen Z has mobilized digitally against corruption, malfunctioning of the government, and the suppression of rights. In Nepal (2025), demonstrations broke out over social media restrictions, compelling a policy change. Viral campaigns were employed by the Indonesian youth to oppose the rollback of civil liberties, and the Bangladeshi students brought the road safety and quota reform movements back to life using hashtags and protests. In the Philippines, policy was influenced by climate activism through TikTok and Facebook. These cases highlight digital platforms as launchpads for Gen Z’s transformative civic engagement.
Political and social life in Pakistan has never been stable, and the introduction of social media has contributed not only intensity but also chaos to the concept of civic engagement. By early 2025, there are 116 million internet users and 66.9 million social media users, or 26.4 percent of the population in Pakistan. It is indicative that over a quarter of Pakistanis are currently active on such platforms as Facebook, X, Tik Tok, and Instagram.
The scale is notable: campaigns can spread nationwide in hours, and local problems can reach international audiences in a matter of hours. Young people who may have never even stepped in a political rally or set up a protest march are now protesting in the language of trending hashtags, viral videos on TikTok, and Twitter storms. The political parties, civil society and activist groups are aware of this transformation and they are putting the digital platforms to good use in shaping the narratives. However, there is a lot of debate over whether these online activities are a true measure of the strengthening of democracy.
PTI is one of the examples of digital activism redefining politics. Since its opposition days, it relied on social media to trend hashtags, mobilize crowds, and engage young people in a conversation. But retweets and a profile update seldom guarantee true change. The case of PTI demonstrates the potential and traps of clicktivism: mobilization but not engagement. The use of campaigns such as #ReleasePTIWorkers (2023-24) questioned crackdowns, and viral petitions provoked discussions on gender violence and corruption. Research indicates that the Twitter campaigns in Pakistan have even led to legal reforms in some instances.
In addition to politics, social movements have taken advantage of social media to raise causes. The Aurat March has been symbolic since 2018. Despite big city marches, a large portion of the discussion takes place on the Internet where it is represented by hashtags like AuratMarch and MeraJismMeriMarzi. This has helped most young women talk straight without the patriarchal filters and that has been empowering. However, backlash is also very strong, as trolling and harassment reveal the bad side of digital participation.
There is a need to combine offline and online life. The right to citizenship cannot be limited to hashtags; it requires voting, volunteering and long term advocacy. It needs the firm civic education, inclusive access (affordable phones for women, rural Wi-Fi), and safeguarding of digital rights. Civil society needs to channel online interest into organized campaigns, and political parties need to use social media as a tool of actual interaction, rather than propaganda.
In 2018, a landmark case was with the hashtag #JusticeForZainab, following the brutal rape and killing of a seven-year-old at Kasur, and most recently, the 2025 killing of Sana Yousaf, a 17-year-old TikTok influencer who promoted women’s rights, sparked widespread outrage. Social media made it possible to transform anger into offline demonstrations in both cases; both are led by the Aurat March group and civic activists, putting pressure on the government, compelling the state and media to take action. The campaign demonstrated the strength of social media in holding people accountable. In Balochistan, online platforms have documented the demonstrations against enforced disappearance and suppression, but activists are arrested and content deleted.
This shift revolves around the youth. In Pakistan, the youth make up two-thirds of the population and during the 2024 election, 48 percent of voters aged 21 to 35 years turned up, the highest percent in the recent past. Influencer promotion and online campaigns were major factors, months of social media discussions. The result is new opinion-makers have emerged as social media influencers, particularly trusted by young voters who doubt mainstream media.
Social media enables the marginalized, women and the youth to be heard but it just produces short term attention. That is the clicktivism paradox: hashtags are controversial, but meaningful change requires years of organizing and building the institution. The international phenomena such as #MeToo and #Black Lives Matter demonstrate that digital power should be combined with offline action to keep the changes alive.
Today civic participation in Pakistan has many challenges. The digital divide excludes rural people, the poor, and women in conservative regions, which imbalances online discourse toward urban elites. Falsehood and propaganda thrive on fake news and conspiracy theories spread faster than the truth, and algorithms are becoming part of how politicians polarize a debate. In the meantime, the gaps in civic education are quite clear: 75 percent of Pakistanis have not received civic education, 90 percent have not become members of human rights organizations, and 83 percent do not have access to libraries. Online anger is not often translated to change the system without civic literacy.
The problem is aggravated by state restrictions. Governments have blocked websites, detained dissidents, and built a culture of fear that freezes speech. The digital spaces that are supposed to empower people are likely to transform into the instruments of control.
What does it take to be a healthy digital citizen of the present era? The problem is that there is a need to combine offline and online life. The right to citizenship cannot be limited to hashtags; it requires voting, volunteering and long term advocacy. It needs the firm civic education, inclusive access (affordable phones for women, rural Wi-Fi), and safeguarding of digital rights. Civil society needs to channel online interest into organized campaigns, and political parties need to use social media as a tool of actual interaction, rather than propaganda.
Clicks will not save the democracy in Pakistan. But true citizenship demands moving from screens to streets. Social media is not the end of civic life but it is the gateway.
