Many of us who read this story, most likely have heard of OnlyFans or know what it is, following the rise of active users, seeing a stark increase over the last few years.
Whether it be through content creators we see online, or "influencers" that have it linked to their social media, OnlyFans has captivated younger audiences with its allure to make ‘easy money’ by posting pornographic images of themselves, and interacting with subscribers to produce custom content for them.
Created to provide a subscription-based platform for creators to earn directly from their content and interactions, OnlyFans was founded at the end of 2016 by Timothy Stokely.
The implications of the COVID-19 pandemic were widespread, and with people's jobs on the line and their source of income in jeopardy while being stuck at home, people sought alternative ways to support themselves, resorting to ‘selling’ themselves digitally on the OnlyFans platform, creating a boom in users not seen before on the site.
While access to creating a page of your own is quite simple and only open to those who are 18, certain creators have sparked controversies surrounding the age at which they decided to open one and the portrayal it could have on younger audiences.
For example, one social media influencer who goes by Lil Tay, whose real name is Claire Hope, debuted her OnlyFans page the day of her 18th birthday at 12:01 a.m. In the short span of three hours, Tay revealed she had accumulated just over $1 million in a photo posted on her Instagram.
Tay has since kept her age on her OnlyFans page set to “Freshly 18” in her bio, unfortunately tapping into the egregious amount of underage predators and their fantasies, so that one can only imagine what they do with her subscription page.
These examples can be seen throughout different people, such as Bhad Bhabie, also known as Danielle Bregoli, who did the same thing Tay did, after which she reported she made four million dollars in her first 24 hours on the site.
These illustrations can romanticize a glamorized industry that, while anyone can do it, these instances are taken out of proportion towards the average user who finds themselves only bringing in around 151 dollars monthly, according to Influencer Marketing Hub.
Despite the negativity surrounding young audiences producing these forms of media, the platform saw an execrable 377.5 million users at the end of 2024, according to Business Insider. A number that continues steeply upwards year after year since 2020.
Unsurprisingly, in a Zipdo education report published at the beginning of May, 80 per cent of OnlyFans users are male, while 70 per cent of content creators are female.
Depending on where you may look, reports vary slightly in numbers, but the age demographic for active male users sits around 25 to 34, representing around 30 per cent of users, with the largest woman age demographic sitting between 18 to 24, just shy of 30 per cent as well.
Male users also make up 75 per cent of all total OnlyFans subscriptions. With the top one per cent of OnlyFans creators continuing to bring in the majority of the revenue, average users find themselves perplexed that creating their own page is not as fruitful as depicted by other creators.
Sabira Solana, 22, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, first heard about OnlyFans in a similar fashion to how a majority of us heard of it, through social media and word of mouth.
“I saw it on a lot of blog posts, like 6ixbuzz and stuff, and there was another, I think her name was Belle Delphine, or something like that,” Solana said.
“From the posts and things that I saw online, it seemed like a quick, easy money kind of job, and very body positive, in a way, everyone was kind of supporting the women who did stuff like that,” Solana said. “No one really talked about the negative effects, at least the blog posts that I saw didn't really say anything.”
Solana, like many, fell prey to the starstruck allure of the fantasy that this form of sex work was portrayed, where you have the opportunity to control what you post. The unknown side effect, however, was the process of being dehumanized.
With the state of her current living situation and help from her boyfriend, then 18-year-old Solana decided to tap into her interests after reading post after post since she was 17, seeing nothing but possibilities like so many others today.
“I wanted the money that could come from it, I saw how much potential other people had from it, so I was like, I want to make that money, you know what I mean?” Solana said. “Like, obviously, I wasn't expecting to make millions, but I thought I could get some form of financial stability from it.”
However, the rose coloured glasses that once sat comfortably on her nose quickly slipped, revealing a truth she knew about very quickly in her first few months.
“Some of the things that people would say, when they reach out to you, whether it's to make requests or to just literally comment, say some pretty nasty and very vulgar things, and it's just kind of dehumanizes you a little bit,” Solana said. “I was kind of expecting that, but when you're actually reading the messages, it just makes you feel kind of icky, like gross. They talk to me as if I'm not a real human being at the end of the day, behind a screen.”
Some of the requests were so vulgar that Solana felt too uncomfortable to repeat them, and those she did can not be shared. Is this the industry young girls look up to? The industry they want to swim into? The unfortunate reality is that it is.
“It didn't help that I wasn't earning nearly as much as I hoped I would, like my self-worth was kind of like dropping by the day,” Solana said.
Despite this, Solana acknowledges the privilege we all have of choosing to do something no matter what, and hopes girls of all ages simply walk into this, should they choose to, dressed in knowledge.
“Don't rush, don't let other people influence your decision,” Solana said. “Do your research, please, like do all [the] research. I feel women, or anyone really, should have the freedom to do what they please. So I'm not saying don't do it, but think about it first, like really, really, really think about it.
“At the end of the day, you're still kind of catering to a male audience, and is it really empowering then?” Solana said.
Solana has since left the industry after several months and has moved on to pursue her dreams of starting her own business.
This form of media, or forms of expressing oneself in this way, is not a reality I see being plausible for young girls to continue to grow up in and to sexualize themselves in this way. Once something is on the internet, it never goes away. That's the ambiguous thing about it.
While the concept of posting such promiscuous photos of yourself online is foreign to some, to others, it remains open for those who want to indulge in such self-expression. After all, wouldn’t you do it too if you knew it was going to be successful?
