A new study published in the journal Sexuality & Culture has found that many adolescents in Spain, including those as young as 12, are not only aware of OnlyFans but also see it as a viable and even empowering way to make money. In group discussions with over 160 teenagers, researchers discovered that platforms promoting erotic content are influencing how young people—especially girls—view economic opportunity, self-worth, and sexuality. Teens frequently framed content creation as a personal choice or expression of agency, while minimizing the risks.
I’m a 32 year old man with a receeding hairline. I too see OnlyFans as an appealing alternative to traditional work. Unfortunately no one else wants to see that.
In all fairness, you don’t have to spend very long working in retail to feel like sex work not only probably pays much better, but is also probably a lot less degrading.
100% this. I’ve been sexually assaulted, spat at, threatened with the police, had a snake pulled on me (???). None of these things happen to you on only fans ( I guess you might have another kind of snake pulled on you eyyy) and you’d make significantly more money.
Don’t like 90% of onlyfan people make next to nothing? I thought only a small portion of them can actually afford to do it “full time”.
Yeah, same thing with cam girls. A few popular ones can make a lot of money, but it’s pretty common to see rooms that are mostly empty with a bored girl waiting for tips and slowly getting more and more discouraged.
There’s so much free porn on the internet. Including theirs, because there’s always people recording and wanting their own clout or money from sharing it. Though one plus side is due to the sheer volume of what’s available, the “once it’s on the internet, it never leaves” doesn’t always apply. And even that which stays can be hard for anyone else to find due to the noise.
Though those who advertise their OF also advertise the search string to find it for free.
Sorry, kids. Porn is another line of work that’s going to dwindle away, thanks to AI.
I am glad I will live in a world where I don’t have to worry about seeing my daughters selling their sex online. I will only indirectly see them sell it to their partners for protection and attention.
Well, that’s probably the only people left who could get paid for porn. There’s lots of republicans on the internet.
I mean, oldest profession and all that. Shouldn’t be surprising. When you can just fill mason jars with tap water and let the imaginations of some horny others do the rest, what’s not to like?
Wait what’s the mason jar part all about? Do they sell their bath water or something?
Yeah, some porn influencers (e.g. Belle Delphine) sold their “bath water” for, like, $500 a pop. They sold out in minutes. Desperate people are very easy to manipulate.
That tells a lot about the job market.
The solution is, of course, more censorship.
“People as young as 12 have realistic views of the economic viability of sexuality, how dare they.”
I don’t think you can extrapolate that from this. Recognizing economic hardship and understanding nuanced sexual dynamics in society are very different.
It would be like saying a child understands the military industrial complex and systematic oppression just because they liked GI Joe action figures or want to be in the army. Lots of kids just think helicopters and explosions are cool. Then their opinions change as they get older and begin to understand the actual toll on human life that a war takes.
Somehow I doubt that. More likely they view it like being a YouTuber, streamer, or influencer, when in reality it’s primarily video production and marketing. It’s not just “film titties get money”, you have to actually convince people to subscribe.
I think that the larger problem is that you probably aren’t going to be an erotic actress for your whole life.
Like, what the authors seem to be focusing on is the degree to which teens might see this as an alternative to traditional work or being educated:
Another important finding was how strongly OnlyFans was associated with financial success. Teens repeatedly cited the platform as an easier and more appealing alternative to traditional work or education.
So, okay. Say you’re a young woman and 20, and you make pretty good money putting on cat ears and licking a microphone or whatever’s presently in vogue compared to most other things you could be doing at that age. But…are you going to be doing that at 30? 40? 50? Are you likely to make enough to retire off that in the time that you’re successfully doing that? Because if you haven’t acquired a skillset in that period for a lifelong career…like, if you forego education for that, that could be a really expensive exchange.
Now, in fairness, I kind of feel like some similar issues also apply to things like being a professional sports player. Short viable career for most sports, high risk of not being able to make it big enough to retire off earnings. But we also haven’t had a radical recent shift in the pro sports industry.
I guess maybe pro gamers could be in a similar position. I don’t know how many teens plan to do that (though I haven’t seen a lot of material agonising about the number of teens who want to become pro gamers). I have seen a lot of material concerned about the wildly-beyond-what-can-be-sustained numbers who want to become social media influencers, though.
EDIT: Regarding influencers:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-media-influencers-86-of-young-americans-want-to-become-one/
86% of young Americans want to become a social media influencer
I can’t give you a percentage of society that can be viably dedicated to trying to influence others on social media off the cuff, but I am very confident that it is far, far less than that. If anything remotely approaching that level tries to do the field full time and make major tradeoffs for it, that’s going to potentially be very costly for society.
There’s not really any stigma to being a former sports star, that’s one big difference.
I mean, I can imagine a world where there isn’t to being a former erotic actress either. Used to be a stigma attached to being a (non-erotic) actor or actress, whereas today, we have very high-prestige actors.
But that world still requires people to have a skillset for their working life — like, that’s kinda fundamental.
If you are successful as a content creator, whatever the platform, you have great marketing, communications and branding skills. How transferable do you want the skills to be?
Big if. Most aren’t that successful.
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I can imagine it too, but that’s not the world we live in, and I don’t think we will any time soon.
Well, it’s hard to predict societal change, I think. I remember commenting that a lot of past futurism seemed to be a lot more accurate on technological change than it was on social change. Gender roles or clothing predictions aren’t all that great, though what machines are doing can be at least in the ballpark. So I feel kind of on thin ice here.
But if you look at the article, the stigma doesn’t seem to be showing up with the study participants:
Others expressed admiration for girls who made money through OnlyFans, seeing them as smart or independent. This normalization of sexualized self-presentation—and the lack of critical reflection on its long-term consequences—worried the researchers, who warned that it reflects a broader cultural shift toward viewing intimacy and the body as tools for profit.
If you look at what a lot of musicians do today in music videos, I’d say that it’s not terribly far off softcore pornography. I’ve certainly seen softcore pornography in the past that was less-explicit than what a mainstream musician might be doing in music videos in 2025.
And I think that that’s a shift that’s been happening for a long time. Selling sexuality was part of what Michael Jackson did in the 1990s or Elvis did in the 1960s.
So my guess is that the trajectory is towards normalization. Can’t say with any certainty that the trajectory will continue, though.
“Teens as young as 12“
Im pretty sure that’s now how teens work…
Was I not a teen at 12? They fucking lied to me? Pitchforks and torches out.
“ThirTEEN”. it’s kind of right there in the name…
I thought the term was pre-teen. I remember adamantly making the distinction when I was twelve because I wanted to be so mature and not a kid.
Jesus Christ Im surprised my parents didn’t roll their eyes straight out of their sockets…
Somebody start monitoring GOP members for trips to Spain
The children yearn for the… yikes.
y i k e s
In person sex work might be safe from AI, only fans probably not.
We are not religious in any way, for good reason. We also don’t necessarily shelter our kids. But my kids around this age don’t even know what Only Fans is. And them and their friend group never say or do anything even alluding to knowing or caring about these kinds of things.
These kids are being exposed to something and some kind of authority figures are failing them.
They know what it is. My 11 year old knows what it is because of YouTube, memes, and such.
Knowing what it is and actively viewing it because you know what it is are two separate things.
Your first failure in this response is a presumption that everyone’s kids have unrelenting access to YouTube, memes, or social media. Especially presuming parents are not at all making time to give the kids context as things come up due to school or otherwise, or as we open doors and give more independence.
I know lots of neighborhood kids who are clearly patented much more closely and have no clue about this stuff. I also know some neighborhood kids that play GTA online every night.
Parenting and children are not monoliths, and anecdotes aren’t truths for everyone.
Do you think most kids by the age of 12, haven’t seen any porn, at all?
I know lots of neighborhood kids who are clearly patented much more closely and have no clue about this stuff.
You then know a lot of neighborhood kids who have lied to you about their knowledge of this stuff.
You missed, “and such.” Behold the power of peers and socialization! My point is, they likely have heard of it.
Most kids aren’t homeschooled
how do you know they don’t know what it is? it’s hard to believe when every other twitch streamer and Instagram influencer has an account they promote from their main page.
Because I’m actually involved in their lives? They also don’t have unrelenting access to shit like Instagram and twitch.
You can see the difference with the school or neighborhood kids who do (some, not all, they’re all different). We don’t necessarily restrict them from associating with those kids, but we frequently check in, ask about things, watch some of the interactions, and provide context as necessary. Always focusing on what it means for them. What is their gain/loss. Essentially avoid the “because I said so” and focus on why they care about something (it helps to think selfishly if you were in their shoes).
Without aggressively steering their lives (like my parents did), it is interesting to me how when they’re just basically supported like independent humans, with respect, and some decent but not overbearing guardrails, they basically have no interest in some of that stuff. That’ll eventually change, but the peer pressure just doesn’t seem to click the same as 30 years ago.
I think when you either don’t parent at all, or aggressively parent, you inadvertently push kids where they shouldn’t go. I would know cause I lived it. There’s a balance somewhere in there and I’m watching it happen IRL for years now.
And to be clear, I am NOT tooting any horns. That’s what my parents did. It was all about their success being parents. Fuck no. My job is to raise functional adults. They are not my property or trophy. This isn’t about me or my success. Before anyone attacks that shit as usual. I’m just speaking honestly.
I don’t think like a parent at all. I’m 18. I just can’t imagine someone in junior high being that clueless because none of my classmates were. Heck even the Mormon kids in my class, arguably the most sheltered and naive, knew what content is available online because even if they didn’t consume it, because they have friends and talk to their classmates.
what’s more likely? that a bunch of hormonally charged teens don’t talk about sexual topics, or that some aspect of a teenager’s life isn’t known to their parents?
The odds seem to favor number two, in my opinion. sorry.
Um, I’m going to fill you in on a secret:
Kids as young as 13 have nearly certainly viewed porn at some point.
And yes, even when I was a kid, whose parents had pretty strict controls over things back in the 70s and 80s… Guess what? We had a porn stash in our “hideout” in the woods.
