What’s ‘Granfluencer’? Older Social-Media Stars Are Thriving

The term “influencer” conjures images of young people, replete with ring lights and smartphone cameras, spending hours at home or out on the nearest sidewalk or boardwalk, attempting to capture a viral dance move or lip-sync the latest sampled catchphrase. Emphasis on “young”—but that isn’t always the case.

The site MedicareHealthPlans.com set out to feature “granfluencers” by creating a grid of 50 people—each over the age of 65, and each with a social-media-follower count of at least 5 million.

At the bottom of the list is the relative youngster Howard Stern, with his online audience of merely 5.8 million. At the top is the true Queen of All Media, Oprah, who’s got 84.5 million. The numbers were compiled by using the site socialblade.com to check follows across all major platforms. A search there for “Oprah” shows she’s got 43 million followers on Twitter alone, but it helps to know specific usernames on each platform to get the right numbers.

The youngest granfluencer is 65-year-old Venezuelan singer-songwriter Ricardo Montaner, who just edged out Dominican singer Juan Luis Guerra. Both are also probably the only non-household names on the list, at least for US audiences.

Well, that’s not entirely true—a couple of pure influencers are also on the list, people who are only famous online: specifically, “The Old Gays” of TikTok (with 8.9 million followers) and BaddieWinkle from Instagram (6.1 million).

Every other senior on the list is someone you’ve likely heard of—an actor, a billionaire, a scientist, a musician, or a spiritual leader. It pays to have a following outside social media to get a big following on social media. The youngest American on the list is Steve Harvey. The oldest person on the list is nature voice-over maestro David Attenborough, who’s listed as a “biologist,” with 5.8 million followers. He’s 96.

Are there any surprises on the list? One of the listings is now posthumous; actor Leslie Jordan. And the 87-year-old Dalai Lama’s following (36.6 million) outranks that of 85-year-old Pope Francis (27.8 million). There don’t appear to be any politicians on the list, unless you count 75-year-old former governor and terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger (58.5 billion).

It’s sad to say that even if you combined the 70.7 million followers of 66-year-old Bill Gates with the 21.9 million followers of 72-year-old Richard Branson, the two billionaires on the list, they still have fewer follows than the 51-year-old guy currently running Twitter.

Here’s the full list.

(Credit: MedicareHealthPlans.com)

You can read more, including some survey results of how over 1,000 current 65-plus-year-olds use social media, over at MedicareHealthPlans.com(Opens in a new window).

Most influential PCs