Last week the daughter of famed movie director Steven Spielberg announced publicly that she would be starting a porn career and selling homemade videos of herself via various online platforms. Mikaela, the adopted daughter of famed movie director Steven Spielberg is 23 years old and sadly her decision is becoming more and more common among American girls her age and even younger.
It’s flown under the radar, but a growing trend among teen girls is to use platforms such as Snapchat and OnlyFans to sell nude photos and videos of themselves. Although Snapchat does not directly endorse this behavior, other third party apps and payment options allow young girls to run what are called “premium” Snapchat accounts where men pay a fee via a cash app to access the girl’s content. There is no age verification involved and Snapchat appears to have interest in clamping down on the practice.
OnlyFans is another option. In a recent article The New York Times declared that OnlyFans.com has changed sex work forever. Although the platform claims to be a place for ‘creators’ to showcase their work, a majority of their users and customers are there for homemade porn.
OnlyFans was founded by Timothy Stokely, who had previously operated a porn cam site before launching OnlyFans in 2018. Stokely himself has said that OnlyFans is a “bolt on” addition to other social media platforms and that’s exactly what young girls have decided to do.
Countless sub-Reddits exist on the popular social media site Reddit where girls as young as 18 post nude photos watermarked with their OnlyFans website address or Snapchat link. Age verification does not exist for any of these posts, so there is no way to determine the actual age of girls posting on sub-Reddits with names that clearly suggest “barely legal” content. Many of these sub-Reddits have subscriber counts approaching the million member mark or beyond, proof of how this underground market has essentially gone mainstream.
OnlyFans does claim to verify the age of its creators, but the process is easily fooled with photos of fake ID’s that can be uploaded. Snapchat is much easier for young girls to use without needing any ID’s to verify they are over 18. They can accept payments via Paypal or other payment apps and then provide a link to their secret Snapchat account where they allow access to paying customers. There is no age verification in this entire process as it skirts around the rules of the apps being used.
Snapchat only requires its users to be over the age of 13 to use the service. However, even at that, executives for the company admitted that their current age verification protocols are “useless”.
The news of Mikaela Spielberg made headlines as people seemed shocked by her decision to sell porn videos online, but the truth is the path she has taken is becoming very common among America’s youth. Most adults and parents have no idea what a premium Snapchat is, yet most people under the age of 20 know it means a young girl selling nude videos and photos to older men. It’s almost impossible for executives at Snapchat to not know this is taking place on their platform. Several apps that have the name Snapchat in the title are available to help people manage their premium Snapchat accounts more easily, so the company is well aware this is going on.
So while people should be free to sell pornographic photos or videos of themselves if they are over 18 and choose to do so, the real question is why is this becoming such a popular trend among young Americans looking to make money?
SHARE