‘Grandfluencers’ debunking aging myths via social media

At 71, Joan MacDonald’s health was in shambles.

She was overweight and on numerous medications for high cholesterol, high blood pressure and kidney trouble.

Her daughter, a fitness coach, warned her that she’d end up an invalid if she didn’t turn things around. She did, hitting the gym for the first time and learning to balance her diet with the help of a brand new tool, an iPhone.

Now 75, MacDonald is a hype beast for health with a bodybuilder’s physique — and 1.4 million loyal followers on Instagram.

She’s among a growing number of “grandfluencers” — people 70 and older who have amassed substantial followings on social media with the help of decades-younger fans.

Michelle MacDonald via AP

“It’s so rare to find someone her age being able to do all these things,” said one of her admirers, 18-year-old Marianne Zapata of Larchmont, New York. “It’s just such a positive thing to even think about.”

Some older influencers are turning their digital platforms into gold. MacDonald has gotten paid partnerships with the sportswear and supplement brand Women’s Best,and the stress-busting device Sensate. She also has just launched her own health and fitness app.

On TikTok, four friends who go by @oldgays — the youngest is 65 — have 2.2 million followers, among them Rihanna, and an endorsement deal with Grindr as they delight fans with clueless answers to pop culture questions.

Others focus on beauty and style, setting up Amazon closets with their go-to looks and putting on makeup tutorials live.

At 78, Lagetta Wayne has teens asking her to be their grandmother as she tends to her vegetables and cooks them in Suisun City, California, as @msgrandmasgarden on TikTok.

KiKi Rose via AP

Wayne, with 130,500 followers amassed since joining in June 2020, owes her social media success to a teenage granddaughter. Her first video, a garden tour, clocked 37,600 likes.

“One day, my garden was very pretty, and I got all excited about that, and I asked her if she would take some pictures of me,” Wayne said. “She said she was going to put me on TikTok. And I said, well, what is TikTok? I had never heard of it.”

Most people over 50 use technology to stay connected to friends and family, according to a 2019 survey by AARP. But fewer than half use social media daily for that purpose, relying on Facebook above other platforms.

Since the coronavirus struck, older creators have expanded their horizons beyond mainstay Facebook, often driven by the growing number of feeds by people their own age, said Alison Bryant, senior vice president of AARP.

Ryan Yezak via AP

In the California desert town of Cathedral City, Jessay Martin is the second youngest of the Old Gays at 68.

“I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life relaxing pretty much, and I do, but this is picking up more for us,” Martin said. “I had a very structured week ,where Monday I worked the food bank at the senior center, Tuesday and Friday I did yoga for an hour and a half, Wednesday I was on the front desk at the senior center. I was just sort of floating by, not being social, not putting myself out there in the gay community. And, boy, has the Old Gays changed that.”

They do a lot of myth-busting about what’s possible when you’re older.

Sandra Sallin, a blogger and artist, has slowly built her following to 25,300 on Instagram. Her reach recently extended to the British Olympic gold-medal diver Tom Daley, who raved about her mother’s cheesecake recipe after his coach spotted it online and made it for her athletes and staff. Sallin, a lover of lipstick who focuses on cooking and beauty, also shares photos from her past and other adventures, like her turn last year in a vintage Spitfire high above the Cliffs of Dover.

At 69, Toby Bloomberg in Atlanta is a Sallin supporter. She discovered Sallin after watching her compete on the short-lived Food Network show “Clash of the Grandmas.”

“She talks a lot about aging,” Bloomberg said. “That’s quite an unusual phenomenon on social media, which is obviously dominated by people far younger than we are.”

Aging is what drew Sallin to social media.

“I wanted to expand my world,” she said. “I felt that I was older, that my world was shrinking. People were moving. People were ill. So I started my blog because I wanted to reach out. After that, I heard about this thing called Instagram.

“I really stumbled my way in. I’m shocked because most people who follow me are 30 and 40 years younger. But there are people who are older, who have kind of given up and say, ‘You know, I’m going to start wearing lipstick.’ ”