Barbara “Babs” Costello is the “internet’s favorite grandma” — and she has the 4 million-plus followers to prove it. Over on her Brunch With Babs account, Costello posts about, well, grandma stuff: cooking, cleaning, crafting. In response, her commenters chime in about how much they miss their own moms and grandmas, or to proclaim, “Babs is everyone’s Mom!” They also reach out to her for advice, and, as she often tells them, “That’s why I’m here.” As her TikTok bio notes, “if you have a hard time navigating how to be an adult,” she’s “here to help.”
“I’m very humbled by this whole thing,” Costello tells Yahoo Life. “Because for someone to say, ‘You’re like a mother to me’ or ‘You’re the grandma I never had,’ it’s really heavy stuff but it touches my heart.” She acknowledges that her content, humor and advice hit a nerve (in a good way!) for so many of her far-flung followers. “I call them my online family,” Costello continues. “I meet them at airports, the grocery store, and as soon as they introduce themselves, we start with a hug. There is this motherly connection, and I love it.”
The only downside, according to Costello? “I used to go to the grocery store in my sweats and T-shirt, but now I put a little makeup on when I go out because the first thing people do is ask, ‘Do you mind if we take a picture?’” But she’s never put off by her fans. “They’re part of the Babs family,” she says, “and I really feel honored. We’re one family and we’re all connected.”
These days, Costello is using her internet fame for the greater good, partnering with Eli Lilly and Co. to spread awareness about memory and thinking issues in older adults — something she experienced with her own mom.
Internet grandmas like Costello fill an important maternal role in the lives of ’grammers and TikTokers around the world — and there are quite a few online honorary grans who are delighting their “internet grandchildren,” and doing it with a wink and a smile.
Photo illustration: Alex Cochran for Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images
The grandmas of TikTok — and the fans who love them
“I started posting videos for fun and with real purpose,” 95-year-old Lillian Droniak, aka Grandma Droniak, tells Yahoo Life. Droniak graces TikTok with her delightful dance moves, hard-drinking humor and clapbacks at poorly behaved men of all ages. Her videos have earned her a following of 14.8 million thanks to a rise to fame that, according to Droniak, was relatively straightforward. “People started liking the videos and saying I was like their grandma,” she says of her viral status.
Was she put off by her sudden catapult to social media stardom? Not at all. “It made me happy that I have so many internet grandchildren,” Droniak says. “I love that I remind people of their late grandmas. It makes me honored to have that role when they scroll on their phone. It makes me feel loved.”
Of course, fame isn’t always easy for a glam granny: “I don’t like all the men in my DMs,” says Droniak. “It can get annoying.”
But her favorite part of being an honorary grandma is the IRL run-ins. “I enjoy getting to meet my internet grandchildren when I go out to the store or out to eat,” she says. “It’s so nice running into fans.”
And boy, do these online grannies have fans. Joy Ramirez of Tennessee is one of them. She tells Yahoo Life that she swears by the delight that is following Pasta Grannies, which has 1.3 million Instagram followers. As the name suggests, this is an account dedicated to finding and filming Italian grandmothers making pasta.
New Yorker Bonnie Elmann tells Yahoo Life that her favorite Instagram granny is Ask Bubbie (327,000 followers), a pediatrician grandma who warmly hands out practical parenting and medical advice for overwhelmed parents.
And in Baltimore, Sarah Bregel is hooked on “online grandparents” Kris and Dave, an older activist couple living in Detroit who have made a name for themselves by posting content on topics ranging from dad jokes to liberal rage. “I love ’em because they feel like the snarky liberal grandparents I wish I had,” Bregel says. And she’s not alone: Kris and Dave’s feed is filled with glowing comments from fans, like this one: “I’m so glad I have you both in my Instagram life. You’re like family. You bring me a lot of joy.”
Why they’re so beloved
Lakelyn Eichenberger has a PhD in gerontology, the study of older folks and how aging affects our society. She says that for those who have lost their family elders, “these influencers may remind us of our own moms or grandmas,” which makes us feel instantly comfortable with them and nostalgic. “Funny little things that they say or do can trigger a memory and take us back to a certain point in time,” Eichenberger says of online grandparent stand-ins. They help their followers “find comfort and connection,” she adds.
Educator Asami Robledo-Allen Yamamoto of the Abuelas Project, part of the nonprofit Latinos in Heritage Conservation, agrees. “We connect with internet grandmas because they feel like someone we already know,” she tells Yahoo Life. “When someone like Grandma Droniak appears on social media, these women remind us of the ones who raised us, or the ones we wish we had known better.”
Yamamoto explains that supporting the grandma relationship — stand-in and otherwise — is exactly why her organization’s Abuelas Project was created: “to honor the cultural role of grandmothers in Latinx communities.” The project is a community archive where people share “family photos, oral histories and places tied to their abuelas’ everyday lives,” she says. “These women preserved culture through practice, not performance. They remembered songs from childhood, corrected your Spanish, taught you how to make tamales by feel, not by measurement.”
And just like the abuelas that Yamamoto and her community remember, the online honorary grandmas — from Babs to Bubbie — move through life (and the internet) with deftness and wisdom. “They carry a kind of ease, humor and authority that’s hard to fake,” says Yamamoto, and that’s all the more refreshing in today’s social media world of hyper-curated, often inauthentic-feeling feeds.
In short, we love to watch them for the laughs, but also because of something deeper: the trusted, soothing advice of elders we admire. “There’s comfort in the way they move, the way they tell you what you should be doing, the way they share stories or advice without overthinking it,” says Yamamoto. “That energy lives in many of our own homes, and seeing it online feels familiar, even intimate.”
Another key reason for these grandma influencers’ success, says Eichenberger, is that they don’t fit into “the stereotypes that society creates for older adults.” These grandmas are hardly past their prime.
“Many of them are living vibrant lives — exercising, traveling, cooking, exploring new hobbies, spending time with family and even doing things like dating that seem out of the ordinary of an older person,” she points out. But please, stop sending Grandma Droniak DMs.
