Women fall behind as Gen Z men rule Bangladesh's digital square
On a humid Dhaka evening, 20-year-old Mahin flicks between three Facebook accounts on his phone. One is for family, another for sharing memes, and the third, his favourite, is dedicated to politics. “You can’t just rely on one profile,” he laughs, as Messenger pings nonstop with campaign groups and heated debates.
Across the room, his younger sister Nabila scrolls quietly through Instagram. She rarely posts. “If I put up a photo, I get comments I don’t want,” she says, shutting the app with a sigh. “It’s easier to stay invisible.”
Their digital habits mirror a national reality. In Bangladesh’s online public square, men outnumber women nearly two to one. And among those men, it’s Generation Z – the youngest and most restless cohort – who are calling the shots.
The numbers behind the imbalance
Fresh figures from NapoleonCat, a Poland-based analytics platform, reveal just how skewed the landscape is. As of August 2025, men made up 63.2 per cent of Facebook users in Bangladesh, compared to 36.8 per cent women. On Messenger, the split is almost identical. Even on Instagram, a platform widely seen as youth- and image-friendly, men dominate with 65.9 per cent of the audience, while women trail at 34.1 per cent.
LinkedIn doesn’t publish gender data for Bangladesh, but the imbalance is assumed to be no less stark.
Why the gap? Technologist Sumon Ahmed Sabir believes politics is central. “There’s heavy political involvement online,” he told Jago News. “Men are far more active in campaigning, propaganda, even mudslinging. Many operate multiple accounts. Women aren’t absent, but men are simply more visible and more numerous in these spaces.”
Gen Z: The new power brokers
While women’s representation stalls, one age group has surged forward. Generation Z, those aged 18–24, now form the backbone of Bangladesh’s digital world.
On Facebook, they account for 31.4 million of the country’s 73.3 million users, 42.8 per cent of the total audience. On Instagram, their dominance is even more pronounced at 55.7 per cent. Nearly half of all Messenger users are in the same bracket.
“Gen Z doesn’t just use social media, they live on it,” says Professor Dr BM Mainul Hossain, Director of Dhaka University’s Institute of Information and Technology. “Whether it’s politics, education, or social causes, they’re constantly online. It’s rare now to find a young person without a digital footprint.”
LinkedIn is the only platform where they fall slightly behind, with 25-34-year-olds taking the majority. But even there, Gen Z accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the audience, clear evidence they’re reshaping professional networks too.
From TikTok humour to political firestorms
This generational dominance is altering the tone of the internet. Marketers chase Gen Z with memes, micro-videos and snappy commentary. Politicians, meanwhile, lean heavily on them for digital campaigning, recognising their reach and speed in amplifying messages.
From online climate campaigns to fiery debates over gender equality, it is often Gen Z who light the first spark, and drive conversations into the mainstream.
The voices missing
And yet, the imbalance remains glaring. For every Mahin with three Facebook accounts, there are countless young women like Nabila, present, but hesitant to speak. For them, cultural expectations, digital literacy gaps and the risk of harassment continue to limit participation.
The result is a digital square that is vibrant but skewed, where young men shape the feeds, the debates, and the algorithms.
The bigger question is whether this very generation, Bangladesh’s first truly digital natives, will make inclusivity their next campaign. If they do, the country’s online conversation could start to sound far more like the nation it represents