Unattainable beauty standards, a history of sexual violence in childhood and economic vulnerabilities today push many young women to create sexual content on platforms such as Onlyfans, in search of recognition, money or a better social position, but exposed to threats and unequal power relations.
This is according to experts consulted by Efe involved in studies on this phenomenon, which has returned to the news due to the impact of an interview that Jessie Cave gave this week to The Times, in which the actress, known for her role as Lavender Brown in the Harry Potter saga, claimed that, since she joined Onlyfans in 2025, she has earned more money than "in her entire career." “It is the most empowering thing I have done in my entire life,” explains Cave in the British newspaper, although he details that its content is not sexual: the protagonist of his videos is his long hair, which he braids, combs or shakes, always dressed.
The private sexual content business is currently presented as an “increasingly normalized and natural” way of working, according to Ignacio Ceinos, sociologist and researcher at the Child Heroes Foundation, which recently published the report The Monetization of Intimacy.
Ceinos links the rise of these practices with discourses focused on entrepreneurship, self-exposure and “hypersexualization as empowerment.”
“Society has pornified us since we were little,” also points out Laura Barrios, president of the Young Women Federation, an organization that published the Onlyfans report in 2024. A space whitewashed from the sex business, which was widely disseminated.
Barrios maintains that these platforms continue to hide a system of pimping and hypersexualization under ideas of freedom, autonomy and “false empowerment.”
With the risk, furthermore, that minors may access it and distort their way of understanding sexuality, warns Clara Burriel, a violence specialist at Save the Children.
According to these reports, 84% of the creators of these subscription platforms are women and, although there is no single profile, entry into these spaces usually occurs in previous contexts of emotional or economic vulnerability or need for recognition.
Many of them have suffered bullying or situations of gender violence during childhood, adolescence or youth, explains the sociologist. Others suffer from “mental and emotional health problems or clinical diagnoses such as eating disorders or borderline personality disorder,” he adds.
Ceinos explains that “the vast majority” do so out of urgent economic need or due to the absence of work alternatives, something that translates into more difficulty in establishing limits and greater exposure to pressures.
"I started because I need the money. I'm a single mother trying to survive," says another creator cited by the researchers of the Child Heroes report. Only a small group creates content as a hobby or an additional source of income. "I like to record content, and if it makes money, so much the better. Not out of necessity. I already have my job, it's a simple hobby," explains a 20-year-old girl in the same report.
On average, female creators earn 112 euros per month, according to Ceinos, a fact to which Barrios adds: "Those who are starting out do not earn 3,000 euros per month, contrary to what companies sell." In addition, the platforms keep 20% of the profits.
The platforms incorporate new users thanks to the normalization of business on social networks, mediated by algorithms and reinforced by consumers, 79% of whom are men, according to data collected by these studies, which point to the persuasive marketing strategies of agencies and gurus to attract female creators.
“They are undercover pimps,” says Barrios. "The relationship between creator and consumer is not always limited to an economic transaction. In many cases it reproduces unequal or misogynistic power dynamics, where users understand payment as the right to demand, pressure or humiliate," says Young Women's research.
“There are minors on Onlyfans because the security of the platform is very low,” warns Barrios. For now, the only filter to prevent access is to request a DNI that proves that the user is of legal age, without verifying that it is the same person who appears in the content.
Taking into account that identity and sexuality are built during adolescence, what they see or do on these platforms “can lay the foundations for what their sexual desire will be throughout their life,” warns Burriel. This expert points out that minors who participate in this content “find it difficult to separate reality from fiction” and are “at greater risk of suffering sexual violence on the Internet” and extortion, such as blackmail or the dissemination of images without their permission.
