EPIDEMIC: 2025 ends with over a million young Americans on OnlyFans — and counting

There’s a certain sadness to modern America that no statistic can capture. But this one comes close: with over 1.1 million American accounts on OnlyFans as of last year, and 84% of accounts globally belonging to women, the U.S. is on pace for a million of its young women to perform on the site in 2026, if it's not there already. A staggering sign, not of empowerment, but of a culture quietly eating its young.

For many of these women, the attraction is simple. Quick money. Fast validation. Digital applause that feels like affection. The promise is painted in neon: You can make more in a month than your parents made in a year. The platform markets itself like a modern miracle, offering flexible hours, creative control, and unlimited earnings.

And once in a while, someone does strike digital gold. Someone earns six figures. A few earn seven. One teen made a million in an afternoon.

Many of these creators are earning less than minimum wage.

But that’s the carnival barker’s pitch, getting the (relatively) innocent in the door. Most women make almost nothing. They join believing they’re one selfie away from superstardom. They discover they’re one of millions in a digital bazaar where the rich get richer and the rest get tired, discouraged, and drained.

The price is far higher than the subscription fee. More than just photos, OnlyFans sells dreams. Visions of one's future peace, future privacy, future opportunity, and, most damning of all, future dignity. One day. Maybe one day soon.

But the women who join for short-term relief end up trading away long-term hope.

The spiritual corrosion is slow but sure. What begins as a side hustle becomes a shadow that follows them everywhere. The digital trail never fades. It clings to job applications (those that OF girls still bother to submit). It lingers in background checks. It echoes in dating conversations. It stains marriage prospects in communities where character still matters.

A decade from now, many of these women will want real things — a husband, children, meaningful work — and they will discover that the internet never forgets what the heart desperately wishes it could erase.

The great irony is that many of these creators are earning less than minimum wage once time is counted. Yet the cultural machine sells them the fantasy of being “entrepreneurs,” when they’re really just the inventory. It’s empowerment dressed like exploitation and exploitation pretending to be liberation.

OnlyFans is arguably worse than prostitution. Not because of what it shows, but because of what it destroys.

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BENJAMIN HANSON/Middle East Images/AFP | Getty Images

Traditional prostitution, for all its evils, stays out of sight. OnlyFans turns intimacy into endless reruns — downloadable, screenshot-able, shareable, permanent. A mistake made once in real life becomes a scar. A mistake made online becomes a monument.

Add to that the spiritual damage — the slow destruction of the inner life, the steady erosion of self-worth, the growing sense that once you’ve sold pieces of yourself, you never fully reclaim them. And if anyone doubts evil still works in the world, remember the devil’s oldest trick was convincing people he didn’t exist. OnlyFans is proof that he does.

Most heartbreaking of all is that these young women aren’t evil. Some, of course, are reckless hedonists. But many are simply victims of a society that promised them everything and delivered nothing: rising rent, worthless degrees, sinking salaries, and a culture that treats young women as disposable entertainment.

Of course they’re looking for a way out. Of course they’re tempted by something that pays now, because everything else pays later, if it pays at all. Quick cash begets a slow crisis. The glow of instant income fades into the grim awareness that no one wants to build something lasting with a woman whose past is present on a server farm in California, waiting to be rediscovered by anyone with a wi-fi connection.

And this is where the tragedy deepens. Because the very thing that lured them in — visibility — becomes the prison they can’t escape. At 19, visibility feels thrilling. It feels catastrophic at 29, when HR departments are Googling you, in-laws are searching your name, and your own children, God help them, might one day stumble onto the digital debris of your 20s. The internet is merciless that way. It preserves everything, except innocence.

Meanwhile, the platform keeps expanding its reach, scooping up more and more young women who would never dream of standing on a street corner but will film themselves for strangers online. The stigma feels less severe when it’s filtered. Digital danger, at your fingertips, feels paradoxically distant. But the consequences are exactly the same and sometimes worse.

The truth every influencer-economy evangelist avoids is simple: The body isn’t a business model, and desire isn’t a pension plan. An entire generation of young women are being urged to monetize the very thing they’ll one day wish they had guarded. OnlyFans sells them the illusion of independence while turning them into sexual serfs — dependent on strangers’ attention, uncaring algorithms, and a market that gets bored faster than it pays.

This ends the same way every false liberation ends. A decade from now, when these women want stability, the past they broadcast will come roaring back. And the same culture that shouted, “You go, girl,” will look away, pretend it never egged them on, and then mercilessly judge them for believing the lie.