Polise’s account “The Muthership” has nearly 1 million followers. She started the account during the pandemic as a distraction and a way to have fun — but soon it became a second career in the making. “Some people would ask me, oh, how did you do that transition? How did you figure that out? So, I said, I’ll make a tutorial for you. And that was the turning point in social media for me,” Polise said. She’s now making money through paid tutorials teaching others how to use TikTok.
But the number of people 65-plus on social media grows each year: In 2014, 21% of those in that age group were on social media, a figure that more than doubled to 45% by 2021, according to Pew Research. “We think of older people in a certain way, and the more older people that put themselves out there authentically on social media, we can change what aging looks like and it can be more positive,” Polise said.