Where does the hype about “Granfluencer” come from?
What makes these videos so successful? Is it the hope of a young target group that life is not over when you are over 70? Or is it primarily the unexpected, the deviation: the visibility of people who are not “young and beautiful” but still have something to say? Silke van Dyk, professor of political sociology in Jena, is not particularly astonished:
“For several decades now, we have been witnessing surprising debates about the young old, the active old, the fit old, the successful,” she says. “Although you could say: OK, we have known for several decades that old people don’t always sit in rocking chairs smoking pipes and knitting. That is an absolutely antiquated image of old age, but amazingly it has persisted to this day.”
Fit seniors are celebrated – and the others?
Age: This is less a biological category than a socially created one, in which media representation plays a major role. And which is often affected by discrimination. But while actors over 40 still have to fight for engagements in films and theaters, old people who are young at heart can show on social media that they are actively participating in social life, that they still have potential and understand young trends. Like Günther Krabbenhöft from Berlin, a techno-dancing senior with over 300,000 followers.
Fashion, culture, cuisine: the display of a good life. You can buy their everyday outfits via the Instagram page of fashion influencers Aki and Koichi. For example, a Bottega Veneta bag. Cost: 4,000 euros, about two and a half times the average monthly pension in Germany.
The fact that the image we have of old age is influenced by such social media channels is not entirely positive for sociologist Silke van Dyk: “The more fit, healthy, active, successful old people are publicly present, namely as everyday people, the more the pressure increases on all those who can no longer meet these demands for activity and vitality.”
What we don’t see: poverty, fear, disability
Van Dyk speaks of a “revaluation of old age” that we are currently experiencing and that is also reflected on social media. “We see that younger older people in particular are trusted to do things that were not previously associated with old age,” she says. “But at the same time we see that old age continues to be extremely devalued.”
And in fact, we hardly see anything on TikTok and Instagram: nursing homes from the inside. People affected by poverty in old age. Tips for everyday life with an increasingly frail body. But this is precisely where the big opportunity lies: to have a say in and help shape such age-related topics on social media. Would these videos be successful? That is the question.
