Smoke signals from Generation Alpha: Are we ignoring the warning signs?

This story has significance for readers across Kenya and beyond.

Editor's Note: In this piece, Maliba Arnold Nyajayi, Executive Director of Open Future Hub, argues that Kenya’s recent school fires are not just acts of rebellion, but urgent ‘smoke signals’ from a digitally native Generation Alpha. He challenges the narrative of simple indiscipline, urging institutions to address the deep disconnect between today’s youth and outdated systems before the next crisis erupts.

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A generation native to the digital world and artificial intelligence is sending smoke signals like its ancestors.

What drives school unrest in Kenya?

Across Kenya, school fires have once again ignited public anxiety. Dormitories burn. Administrators scramble for answers. Parents demand accountability. Government promises action. The familiar national debate returns: what has happened to discipline in our schools?

It is an understandable question. It may also be the wrong one. School unrest is not new. Kenya has witnessed periodic waves of student strikes, arson and institutional resistance for decades. Long before smartphones, social media and artificial intelligence, students found ways to challenge authority and express frustration. To present today's unrest as unprecedented would be historically inaccurate.

Yet there is something distinctive about the current moment. Curiously, much of the conversation around recent incidents does not centre on Form Four candidates. Many of these students belong to the final cohort of Generation Z and are understandably consumed by the pressures of KCSE preparation. The stakes are too high, the examination too close, and the consequences too significant.

Instead, attention increasingly falls on Form Three and Grade 10 students. These are the age groups that largely constitute Kenya's first visible cohort of Generation Alpha.

The observation does not prove that Generation Alpha is responsible for school unrest. Nor should it be used to stigmatise an entire generation. Rather, it offers a window into the social environment shaping the first adolescents of an era unlike any before it.

How does technology shape Generation Alpha?

Generation Alpha is the first generation in history born entirely into a digitally connected world. They have never known life without smartphones, social media, streaming platforms and algorithmically curated information. They are also the first generation likely to encounter artificial intelligence not as innovation, but as ordinary infrastructure.

For them, technology is not a tool. It is an environment. That distinction matters. The sociologist Émile Durkheim warned that societies undergo periods of dislocation when institutions struggle to adapt to changing realities. He described this condition as anomie—a mismatch between social expectations and lived experience.

Viewed through that lens, the current unrest may reveal less about youthful criminality and more about institutional adjustment.

Today's adolescents face intense academic competition, uncertain economic prospects, relentless digital comparison and unprecedented exposure to information. They are more connected than any generation before them, yet many studies across the world suggest rising concerns around loneliness, anxiety and social fragmentation among young people.

Schools inevitably become pressure points where these broader tensions surface. This is not an argument that artificial intelligence causes school fires. Nor is it a claim that social media produces arson. Such conclusions would be simplistic.

Are Kenyan schools prepared for digital-native learners?

The argument is more modest and, perhaps, more troubling. The conditions shaping adolescence are changing faster than the institutions responsible for guiding it. Many school fires have immediate causes: disputes with administrators, disciplinary grievances, academic pressure, poor living conditions or interpersonal conflict. These realities must not be ignored. But recurring unrest also raises deeper questions.

Are schools adequately equipped for the psychological realities of digital-native learners? Are counselling systems sufficiently robust? Do students have credible avenues for hearing grievances before frustration escalates? Has educational culture evolved as rapidly as the world outside the school gate? These questions deserve attention because institutions often reveal their weaknesses during moments of crisis.

The irony of our age is difficult to miss. A generation raised on fibre optics, smartphones and artificial intelligence appears to be communicating through a metaphor as old as civilisation itself. Smoke.

What are the signals of unrest in schools?

Historically, smoke signals announced urgency. They warned of danger. They demanded attention across great distances. The fires consuming school dormitories are not messages in any literal sense. But they should remind us that recurring unrest is rarely random. It is often a signal that something within the relationship between young people and institutions requires examination.

Every generation announces its arrival differently. Some arrive through music. Others through politics, technology or protest. Generation Alpha is arriving amid profound social and technological transformation. The danger is not that we misunderstand every act of unrest as a generational statement. The danger is that we ignore what these moments reveal about the world shaping the young people who will inherit Kenya.

Because if a generation native to artificial intelligence is still sending smoke signals like its ancestors, the most important question may not be why the signal was sent. It may be why so many adults only notice it when something is already on fire.

The author, Maliba Arnold Nyajayi, is the Executive Director of Open Future Hub (OFH). X: @MalibaArnold.

Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of TUKO.co.ke.

Source: TUKO.co.ke

Reporting originally appeared via TUKO. Read the full source for additional context.