Kanye West has long bragged that he has the attention of 'the youth,' but his audience will be older after his move to Parler

Kanye West Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

• Kanye West agreed to buy social platform Parler after he was locked out of Twitter and Instagram.
• Compared to Twitter, West's reach would be reduced on Parler, and his audience would change.
• Parler's users lean older, and West has a fraction of the followers on Parler that he does on Twitter.

Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, is moving on to another social platform after recently getting locked out of Twitter and Instagram — and the size and makeup of his online audience is set to transform as a result.

The conservative-leaning site Parler, which touts a commitment to "free speech," announced on Monday that Ye had agreed to purchase it after making antisemitic posts on Instagram and Twitter. He then doubled down, leading The LeBron James-produced YouTube series "The Shop" to scrap an interview with West taped last week because he used the opportunity to "reiterate more hate speech." 

If Ye now turns to Parler as his primary communication channel online, his online audience will significantly change.

For starters, his reach will be severely limited compared to what his reach was on Twitter and Instagram.

Ye had around 2,800 followers on Parler as of early Monday, a fraction of his audience on Twitter and Instagram. The rapper has 31 million followers on the former and 18 million on the latter.

Even if Ye manages to surpass the current most-followed person on Parler, Sen. Ted Cruz with 4.8 million followers, he'll still be at a fraction of his former online following.

Ye has also bragged about being connected with the "youth" before. On his song "Selah," he says "We got the minds, we got the youth." And he recently opened a yet-to-be-accredited private school called Donda Academy.

But Parler's audience leans older than that of Twitter. 

About 60% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 34, according to data from traffic analytics company Similarweb. Meanwhile, 66.5% of Parler users are 35 years of age or older.

34% of Parler users are 55 years or older, while just over 10% of Twitter users are in the same age group, according to Similarweb.

Parler has also run into issues with the tech giants that temporarily impacted its ability to reach people via major app stores. Google and Apple briefly removed it from their app stores last year, and Amazon cut it off from its web-hosting service for a short time, for violating its rules, including not moderating posts that encouraged violence.

So while Ye has found a new social network to jump to, there's no question his posts there will find a smaller, older audience for the foreseeable future.