I joined Medium in 2020, long before the 100-follower rule. I agree with your nephew. There's NO way to know how often your followers even SEE your articles, much less read or even just view them. Also, many of us lost qiote a few "followers" that turned out to be bots!

I'm convinced that the main reason I have 580+ followers after three years and only 140 articles on Medium is because of the 1,200+ responses I've written. In the months following my 1st Medium anniversary, I did some "Featured Followers" articles where I'd choose a few authors who followed me in the past month. I'd collect a story from each, quote a piece, tag them and link to his or her article. This is the first one I did: https://medium.com/kit-carmelites-gotta-minute/kits-featured-followers-f0c84efd4c1e

My online chess rating is a number that means something. It reflects my skill in playing. I don't care about the rating number. I just study chess and practice what I'm learning. The number on the scale is also a number that means something. It reflects how well I have or have NOT followed my food boundaries in the past week or two. Spoiler alert: I have been very lax about that and the number's been going up!

There are far more useful metrics on Medium than followers. Better yet, focus on the process of writing articles and responding to the articles written by others. Let the numbers do whatever they're gonna do.