What the rise of millionaire influencers below 30 (who most individuals have by no means heard of) tells us a few profound shift in fashionable Britain: SARAH VINE

A few years ago, when my son was still at school, a friend of his made a TikTok video about having her braces removed. Just an ordinary, albeit very pretty, teenager from west London, excited about getting rid of her tracks. 

It ‘blew up’, as they say in internet circles.

To date, that video – less than ten seconds long – has had more than 120million views, 12million likes and over 100,000 comments. Lola Clark (aka @scoobiezoobie) is now a full-time influencer, with 4.5million followers on TikTok and another 350,000 on Instagram.

She leads an extraordinary life for a 21-year-old – while most of her contemporaries are working McJobs or struggling to get a foot on the career ladder, she works with the likes of Gucci, Stella McCartney, Coach and Charlotte Tilbury while studying at Central St Martins.

She’s just bought her first flat, and last year took all her mates on holiday. All because of a spur-of-the-moment TikTok filmed in her mum’s car.

Success may have come relatively easily to Lola, but she works incredibly hard to hold on to it. She also has her head firmly screwed on, which is just as well because it’s not easy being out there when you’re so young.

And yet, extraordinary as her story may seem, she’s far from alone.

Contrary to what many people think, today’s young adults, faced with unemployment and wage stagnation, are not just sitting around waiting for opportunities to come to them – they’re out there making it happen.

Up and down the country (but mainly up, for some reason… perhaps kids in the North are just naturally more go-getting?), social media is creating an entire new breed of celebrity totally independent of the traditional fame channels, such as TV, film and magazines.

With hundreds of thousands of eager fans hanging on their every move, many of them are making small fortunes.

Actually, not even small. Take for example P Louise, aka make-up influencer Paige Louise Williams. She grew up on a council estate in Droylsden, in the Tameside area of Greater Manchester.

After dropping out of school aged 14, she borrowed £20,000 from her grandmother and started her own make-up brand. She is now a multi-millionaire and granny has got her investment back 1,000-fold.

P Louise’s success is down to her ability to harness the power of social media. She has more than three million followers on TikTok alone, and once made over £1.5million in a single 12-hour TikTok Live Shopping session (that’s when creators make live videos encouraging customers to buy directly via the app, the social media equivalent to teleshopping). Her net worth is estimated at £100million.

She is meanwhile building her own empire by recruiting young ‘talent’ to advertise her brand. Earlier this month, Williams threw a birthday party said to have cost £54,000, complete with paid-for tickets, a DJ and free make-up, for 11-year-old Liverpool influencer Lacey, who makes videos advertising P Louise products.

The event seems to have backfired after critics claimed – not unrealistically – that the whole thing was a tacky publicity stunt and was, according to at least one guest who stumped up the £38 fee, an ‘absolute shambles’.

Regardless, there are many others like Williams. Molly Mae, the former Love Island contestant engaged to boxer Tommy Fury, is a classic of the genre, with her girl-next-door looks and peripatetic love life (Tommy is a hard dog to keep on the porch).

They have one child (Bambi) and another on the way, and Molly – also from Manchester – has 8.5million followers on Instagram and another 4.5million on TikTok.

She’s gone from being a sales assistant at Boots to having her own reality TV show (with which I am very familiar, since my daughter and her friends love to watch it) and her own clothing line, Maebe, which to my eyes seems to mostly consist of rather bland beige jeans and T-shirts, but which seem to sell like hotcakes.

Others of note include Nathan and Grace (@nathanandgrace), a couple who have been together for six years and post rather banal videos of themselves going on holiday to places like Amsterdam, out for meals and for hikes, going shopping at Manchester’s Trafford Centre and breaking their phones.

To my mind, it’s like watching paint dry; but they get thousands of ‘likes’ and have a million followers on TikTok.

They’re not the only ones to have made a business out of their lives. Three siblings who go by The Thomas Brothers online – Ryan, Adam and Scott – together have millions of followers and a podcast called At Home With The Thomas Bros.

In another era these men and women would be working ordinary jobs. But thanks to the relentless rise of social media, they have transformed their fortunes by monetising their existence.

Only last week, it emerged that more than 1,000 Britons under 30 earned more than £1million in the previous tax year – an 11 per cent annual rise.

Of course, a few of them were footballers and pop stars, but a huge proportion were social media influencers cashing in on paid advertisements.

For all that this is a phenomenon studiously ignored by the political classes, the BBC and other snooty cultural commentators, millions of people are clearly obsessed with the actors in this burgeoning and highly lucrative industry.

The shopping malls of Manchester and Liverpool are now full of photogenic young people spending the kind of money that most people can only dream of.

Long-haired Dylan Evans, from Liverpool, has two million followers on TikTok. He makes comedy videos such as ‘your mum’s reaction when you say the C-word’ and mocking American food.

Liberty Poole is an ex-Love Islander living in Birmingham with 1.3million Instagram followers – her brand, Uplifted, sells ‘supportive’ swimwear for women with bigger busts.

The ‘influencer pound’ is a whole micro-economy in itself. It’s more than a cottage industry, it’s a full-blown consumer boom.

Of course, people like Kim Kardashian and Sharon Osbourne have been doing this kind of stuff for years. But to a large extent they built their empires from existing fame, enhanced by reality TV.

What’s different about this new cohort of online celebrities is that they are all – or were – genuine unknowns who became famous more or less organically. 

They don’t have little black books full of contacts, or class connections; they don’t know someone who knows someone. These aren’t nepo babies, they’re just ordinary people, and their success is built on a genuine fan base.

As such, their success tells us a lot about the kind of country Britain is in 2026. What people want to look at on social media – and what they don’t – is fascinating and at times baffling.

Take Angryginge (aka Morgan Burtwistle, 24, also from Manchester), a football YouTuber and FIFA fanatic who won last year’s series of I’m A Celeb. 

Most people had never heard of him when he entered the jungle, and yet his army of followers made sure he won (it certainly wasn’t down to his charm and personality).

Then there’s HSTikkyTokky (also 24, aka Harrison Sullivan) who narrowly avoided becoming HMPTikkyTokky after he crashed his purple McLaren supercar into another vehicle while driving at over 70mph on the A30, which has a speed limit of 40mph. He failed to attend court, instead posting videos of his lavish lifestyle from Qatar, Dubai, Thailand and Spain.

He was eventually arrested and given a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, disqualified from driving for two years and ordered to undertake 300 hours of unpaid work. 

Curiously, the judge referenced his ‘large social media following’ as a reason for his relatively lenient sentence.

Neither of these individuals are especially attractive in terms of looks or personality – and yet they have huge followings.

Part of the trick is relatability: they really could be anyone. Controversy and personal drama – from the ups and downs of their love lives to trouble with the law – are also important for this ‘attention economy’. 

There is a rackety element to many of these people’s lives that runs counter to the veneer of perfection that so many ‘traditional’ celebrities tend to hide behind.

People enjoy being entertained but they also love rubbernecking other people’s dramas. Of course, we already see this reflected on the national stage in the obsession with family feuds such as the Beckhams and the Peatys, or the recent ‘Wagatha Christie’ saga between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy.

But while those high-stakes histrionics unfold against a backdrop of wealth and privilege, with the fans and general public kept very much at arm’s length, the dramas that play out in influencer-land are far more tangible – and, therefore, far more intense.

Of course, the risk is that, like all booms, the bubble will burst. But while many of these accounts are only just becoming mainstream, it’s worth remembering that this is a counter-culture that has been quietly growing for years. 

If you asked most people over the age of 45 who the Sidemen are, for example, they’d probably shrug their shoulders.

And yet for my son’s generation, they are the equivalent of Monty Python or The Beatles. A British collective of seven young men (they’re all in their late 20s and early 30s now), who met at school and started out around 2013 posting online gaming videos and generally pratting around as young men do.

That led to other stuff (music, fitness, boxing, merchandise, events), and they now have a combined following of over 155million, making them not only hugely rich and successful, but also, to a certain extent, the godfathers of this new wave of influencers.

And as many who have come in their wake have discovered, it sure as hell beats working for a living.