Older adults are using a “virtual playground for teenagers” to engage in discourses on aging — and having “immense sway” with their millions of followers, according to a groundbreaking new study.
Researchers from the National University of Singapore analyzed 348 videos on TikTok from older adults with at least 100,000 followers. They found nearly three in four videos featured older adults defying age stereotypes (71%), making light of age-related vulnerabilities (18%) and calling out ageism (11%).
The authors believe findings highlight the potential for older adults “to be put at the vanguard of a movement aimed at challenging socially constructed notions of old age.” They call their investigation a first-of-its-kind study. It was featured recently in The Gerontologist.
Although commonly considered “technophobic,” older adults increasingly are using digital technology, includingTikTok, which “skyrocketed” during the COVID-19 pandemic. The result has been “glammas” (or glamorous grandma) and older adult influencers becoming content creators and influencing millions of followers.
“Notwithstanding the ubiquity of negative age stereotypes, unfolding on TikTok is a powerful counter cultural phenomenon in which older persons actually contest hegemonic discourses on old age by embracing or even celebrating their aged status,” the authors wrote.
With ageist stereotypes common among younger social media users, the authors said participation of older adults in social media is vital to “destabilize age-related norms.”
Beyond encouraging older adults to use social media, the authors suggested efforts could be made to motivate them to actively create their own content. Those efforts, they said, could help undermine beliefs that older adults are disinterested in technology, and embolden them to share their own life experiences and assume a more active role in age-based advocacy. It also could expose younger users to an older population they might not otherwise encounter.
“As the older demographic expands in relation to younger groups, their visibility and representation on social media are all the more crucial,” the authors concluded.
The study was supported by the Social Science Research Council’s Social Science and Humanities Research Fellowship.
