Image Credit: Eaters Collective from Unsplash.
Social media has evolved at a rapid pace since its inception, and this hasn’t slowed down much. Platforms shift, algorithms change, and audiences grow more discerning. But, some creators still manage to stay ahead of the curve.
In 2025, some Gen Z influencers are redefining influence. Whether you’re interested in beauty, lifestyle, comedy, entertainment, or culture, these names are shaping trends, fueling engagement, and offering inspiration.
They’re worth looking into for more than a few reasons. They could offer you insights into becoming an influencer for Gen Z, help you find new brands to buy from, and give you a lot of entertainment while you’re at it.
What Makes an Influencer “Must-Watch” in 2025?
Before naming any names, it’s worth looking at what makes an influencer stand out and a “must watch.” This goes beyond just surface-level follower values. Instead, it involves more than a few other factors, too. More than a few influencers stand out because of more than just their follower account.
This includes:
- They combine massive reach with authentic content.
- They resonate perfectly with Gen Z values in various ways, including with relatability, creativity, and realness.
- They adapt across multiple platforms, like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
- Their influence extends beyond ‘likes’ and into music, brand deals, entrepreneurship, activism, and culture.
While that means some of the most-followed accounts could be seen as the top influencers for Gen Z, some of them could miss the mark because of a few criteria.
With that in mind, it’s worth looking into the top Gen Z influencers to follow. They’ll all boast their pros and cons, offering different content spanning memes, fashion, humor, and much more. They could all be worth following for more than a few reasons.
Top Gen Z Influencers in 2025: Who’s Worth Following?
Addison Rae
Addison Rae originally rose to fame with viral dance and lip-sync videos on TikTok, but she’s successfully transitioned to music, acting, and beauty projects. She’s one of the biggest creators on TikTok, boasting more than 88 million followers as of 2025.
Most of her videos focus on trending choreography and lifestyle content, but she’s also launched her own beauty and skincare collaborations.
Bella Poarch
Bella Poarch first exploded in popularity with having several TikTok videos go extremely viral, making her one of the most talked about TikTokers for quite some time. She’s kept up that popularity with a string of well-watched and popular videos on the platform.
She’s leveraged her initial success to launch a music career, boost her following, and enhance her influencer career. She usually focuses on lip-sync videos, aesthetic content, and content that blends her East Asian roots with pop culture.
Khaby Lame
Khaby Lame is one of the more recognizable faces in the Gen Z influence world, even if many people don’t know his name. His simple, wordless reactions to other videos make him instantly relatable, and his sense of humor crosses language barriers.
His approach also shows that influencers don’t need a complicated setup or overly complex video to achieve virality and build a loyal and engaged following. Simplicity is the speciality here, and there’s no reason why his content shouldn’t get a few laughs.
Alix Earle
Alix Earle focuses on beauty, skincare transparency, and lifestyle, with her “get ready with me” videos proving quite popular among her followers. She’s also a favourite among beauty and lifestyle brands thanks to her engaged and active following.
With active accounts on both TikTok and Instagram, she focuses on creating content that resonates with her core followers, making her one of the more notable options to focus on if you’re interested in transparent skincare and lifestyle content.
Emma Chamberlain
Emma Chamberlain is one of the earliest Gen Z YouTube phenomena, having transitioned into a broader lifestyle brand in the past few years. She blends fashion, candid vlogs, mental health conversations, and everyday relatability in each of her posts.
She leans on long-form videos and storytelling to engage her audience, with her narration and content boasting and authenticness that’s rarely found elsewhere. This has helped her foster deep relationships with her followers, making them quite a loyal group.
Avani Gregg
Avani Gregg predominantly focuses on makeup, with a preference on bold styles and creative visuals. She’s a great pick for influencers and followers who have an interest in beauty, aesthetics, and transformative content.
She demonstrates how creative self-expression and strong visuals can resonate with a Gen Z audience looking for originality. Anyone interested in beauty, fashion, and aesthetics would do well to give her a follow.
Larray
Larray is a content creator known for his humour, relatability, and meme-style videos, which tends to thrive among Gen Z and Gen Alpha followers. His account shows how personality-driven and comedy-based content remains a way to build a following.
It shows that humour shouldn’t be underestimated, especially when it comes to creating a core group of loyal followers with the same kind of humour. Gen Z social media users looking for an account that makes them laugh would do well here.
How These Influencers Reflect 2025’s Gen Z Trends
Each of these Gen Z influencers can all seem quite different from each other. This isn’t just seen with their content, either. They all come from different backgrounds, cultures, and demographics. But, that doesn’t mean they don’t share a few commonalities.
Instead, they have a lot more in common than you’d think, especially when it comes to highlighting Gen Z trends. Some of the more notable are:
- Authenticity Over Polish – Popular Gen Z influencers focus on being their authentic selves rather than showing off an image of ‘perfection.’ Followers appreciate this, and content resonates with them much more because of that.
- Multimedia and Cross-Platform Presence – The most popular Gen Z influencers don’t just focus on one platform and one specific type of content. They diversify across different mediums and platforms to enhance their overall presence.
- Niche and Mass Appeal Blend – Popular influencers for Gen Z focus on a specific niche while also blending in a bit of mass appeal. They focus on a core area while remaining accessible to people at large.
- Cultural Relevance Beyond Social Media – From music careers to brand collaborations and entrepreneurship, influencers look beyond social media for their career, branching out into more than a few areas.
Each of these are qualities that Gen Z at large puts a great emphasis on. The most popular influencers simply reflect these qualities in their own ways.
While that could come in different forms, like humorous video content, the same traits are consistently on show. It’s this reflection that has made these influencers as popular and as engaging as they are.
Tips for Following Gen Z Influencers
Just because certain Gen Z influencers are popular doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy following them nearly as much as others seem to do. It’s always worth focusing on influencers that you can relate to and identify this, with generational questions just being the tip of the iceberg.
It’s worth keeping a few tips and tricks in mind when you’re deciding on who to follow. You wouldn’t want to end up with a social media feed that’s clogged up with posts you’ve no real interest in, after all. Some of the more helpful of these tips include:
- Look at Their Content Mix – Check out how much they blend polished, professional-looking posts with the more behind the scenes and candid posts.
- See What’s Engaging – Just because an influencer has a lot of followers doesn’t mean their posts are being engaged with. Check what’s being interacted with.
- Look at Their Evolution – People evolve over time as their interests and needs change. See if this is reflected in an influencer’s social media posts.
- Understand Value Beyond Followers – The number of followers an influencer has is just one metric to look at. Consider the full picture instead of just this.
Nobody wants to spend ages scrolling through social media just to find a few things they want to interact with. Your time’s worth more than that.
By only following people, both friends and influencers alike, that interest you and you want to engage with, there’s no reason why you should have to worry about that. You’ll end up with a social media feed that you’ll actually like scrolling through every once in a while.
When you’re following the right influencers for Gen Z, there’s no reason why you couldn’t pick up a few pointers to help with your social media game.
Wrapping it Up: Why 2025’s Gen Z Influencers Still Matter
Gen Z influencers are doing more than just getting likes on their posts. They’re helping to shape culture. By combining reach, talent, authenticity, and business savvy, they transform trends into movements, followers into communities, and content into sustainable brands.
Finding the right ones for you to follow – or work with as a brand – isn’t difficult. Focusing on core values and areas is more than enough, and you’ll have an educational and entertaining influencer to follow before you know it.
More than a few of them are worth it.
