Too old to tweet?

When 80-year-old Lata Mangeshkar joined Twitter on Monday, she joined a long list of celebs, being referred to by youngsters as ‘Twitter oldies’.

They’re logging in, sometimes at odd hours, to tweet. Like most teenagers these days, they ‘follow’ their friends and talk about their day, all in Twitterverse. Oh, and they’re all above 60.

When 80-year-old Lata Mangeshkar joined Twitter on Monday, she joined a long list of celebs, being referred to by youngsters as ‘Twitter oldies’. Keeping Lata company are 78-year-old Shammi Kapoor, 76-year-old Asha Bhosle, 67-year-old Amitabh Bachchan, 65-year-old Javed Akhtar, 63-year-old Shatrughan Sinha and 61-year-old Mahesh Bhatt, among others.

Youngsters are not sure if Twitter is a place for the ‘seniors’. “All they do is philosophise. Among the first tweets by Lata Mangeshkar were lines by Wordsworth. That’s not what Twitter is about,” says student Vidhi Arora.

Barring Big B, most of the over-60 Twitteratti have a slim following in comparison to younger actors. Javed Akhtar has a humble 9,000 followers, in comparison to his son Farhan Akhtar, who boasts of 1,65,000. Even the relatively unknown Sonakshi Sinha has almost twice the number of followers as her father Shatrughan Sinha.

“Following an oldie is just not cool... that’s all,” says Abhishek Sharma, 19. “My friends would make fun of me.” “I’d rather follow people of my age,” says Reema Nair, 20.

However, they have their share of support. “They make more sense than the younger lot on Twitter,” says blogger, Anmol Malik. Bahaar Chopra, 23, says, “They should stick to blogging. The shorter version is not for them.”