Even so, top government officials made it clear that they were concerned during several meetings with young activists. “The referendum was an alarm bell for them,” said Mr. Ghazaly Harb, whose three meetings on the subject included one with the interim president, Adly Mansour, who is 68. “They say there is a gap between the current regime and the youth, and they want to understand why is there this gap, and how to get over it,” he said.

Mr. Mansour specifically asked the youth leaders in the meeting, “Where is the problem, and what is the reason the youth were absent like that?” said Susan Herfy, 39, of the Justice Party.

Younger Egyptians say they grew up hearing advice from their parents to keep their mouths shut and avoid challenging their leaders: “Cowardice is the master of morals,” they would say, or “walk by the wall” to avoid attention.

But starting about 10 years ago, members of the younger generation in Egypt began to rebel against the stultifying stability of Mr. Mubarak’s 30-year rule. They found new ways to express themselves through the Internet, thronged to the “Kifaya” movement against Mr. Mubarak’s monopoly on power and formed their own grass-roots organizations, like the April 6 Youth Movement.

Many saw the Tahrir Square sit-in of 2011 as their generation’s Woodstock, and the overthrow of Mr. Mubarak as their mark on history. “It was a struggle against our parents,” said Mina Fayek, an activist and a blogger. “We used to joke it was easier to stand in front of tanks and bullets than to convince your parents to let you go to Tahrir Square to protest.”

In his column, Mr. Aswany marveled that “a generation of youth emerged that was like a mutation.”

“Fathers who feared entering police stations gave birth to children whom we saw stand without flinching or retreating in front of armored vehicles shooting them,” he wrote.

Supporters of the 2013 military takeover, though, have often smeared the young activists as a “fifth column” conspiring with foreign powers to undermine security or provide cover to Islamist “terrorists.”