From Physical to Digital Sexual Exploitation

While the Spanish and Ghanaian cases illustrate different modes of exploitation, they are dangerously connected:

• • In Spain, teens view online sex work as a legitimate career path, driven by media exposure and peer influence.
  • In Tamale, girls engage in direct sexual transactions to buy digital access, potentially setting the stage for future digital exploitation.

Once Tamale girls access social media using funds from transactional sex, they may be exposed to and influenced by the same content creation culture seen in Spain. What begins as survival can evolve into digital sexual “labour”, seen as a safer, more anonymous alternative.

This represents a dangerous grooming pipeline. Girls already conditioned to trade sex for data are prime targets for digital recruitment campaigns that frame online sexual content as empowering. Each step deeper into the exploitation cycle feels like an “improvement,” but continues their entrapment in sexual economies.

Digital Grooming and Unsolicited Sexual Content

Both studies also document a pattern of unsolicited sexual messaging. In Tamale, every girl in our post-pilot focus groups (ages 12-16) reported receiving explicit images and grooming attempts from adult men. The Spanish study found similar patterns: girls were targeted with messages recruiting them for erotic content, while boys received advertising for consumption.

This constant exposure normalises sexual boundaries, desensitises recipients and serves as societal grooming. Girls receive recruitment pitches masked as modelling jobs or influencer collaborations. Boys are socialised to see sexual content as entertainment. Both pathways support the same exploitative ecosystem.

In Tamale, girls told us they initially accepted friend requests or messages out of hope for friendship, love or financial help, highlighting the blurred line between survival and manipulation. The systemic nature of this grooming, occurring across platforms and continents, makes it even more dangerous.

Transactional Sex in Ghana

Our pilot project and research studies revealed widespread transactional sex in Northern Ghana: children trading sex for data, university students in “hookup” arrangements for fees, and women engaging in sex for food or shelter. Digital exploitation is not a distant threat; it’s a logical next step in an already exploitative system.

We need rigorous research to quantify and address this trend, but the trajectory is clear: physical sexual exploitation is a gateway to digital sexual economies. The appeal of “easy money” makes OnlyFans-like platforms appear aspirational to those already surviving through sex.

The Illusion of Empowerment and Escalating Risk

Both Spain and Ghana show how young people view sexual exploitation as more viable than education or legitimate work. In Spain, it’s glamourised; in Ghana, it is viewed by some as being necessary.

In Tamale, girls who trade sex for data already face:

• • Normalised sexual exploitation
    
  • A rejection of formal education and training
    
  • Economic desperation
    
  • Eroded personal boundaries

These factors make them highly vulnerable to trafficking. Traffickers can exploit their existing behaviours by offering “better” deals, higher payments or promises of escape. What looks like opportunity is actually escalation.

Criminalisation and Gendered Vulnerability

While girls are groomed as sellers of sex, boys often become criminalised for other survival strategies. In informal interviews with 16-20-year-old male drug users in Tamale, we heard how boys turned to petty theft while girls turned to sex.

The result? Boys face visible prosecution, while girls are invisibly exploited. Ghana’s male-dominated justice system often reinforces this imbalance by failing to recognise transactional sex as exploitation and protecting perpetrators through disbelief of the victim, failure to identify the female as a victim or institutional secrecy.

Recent anti-LGBTQ+ laws may worsen these dynamics, reinforcing gendered roles and further limiting options for boys while masking the exploitation of girls as socially acceptable.

The Myth of Digital Anonymity

The Spanish study exposed another myth: that online sexual content is private or anonymous. Participants accessed OnlyFans content despite age restrictions and didn’t fully grasp the permanence of their digital actions.

In Tamale, the danger is magnified by low digital literacy. Girls often borrow phones and don’t understand how content can spread, be saved or resurface later. In Tamale’s conservative Muslim society, where the damage from reputational harm is likely to be severe, digital exploitation can have even more devastating consequences.

The cruel irony is therefore that limited digital access drives girls to transactional sex for connectivity, which then exposes them to risks they don’t fully comprehend. Technology both enables and documents their exploitation.

Conclusion: A Global Challenge Requiring Multi-Level Solutions

In Ghana, the pressure to stay digitally connected, or simply survive, pushes some girls into transactional sex. The system doesn’t offer alternatives; it demands participation.

Both call for urgent action. We need:

• • Digital literacy programs that equip young people to recognise grooming and protect themselves online

  • Basic digital safety education covering passwords, selfies, friend requests, sexting, sextortion, deepfakes, anonymity, and the permanence of digital content, as delivered in Module 3 of the HEP schools program

  • Economic interventions that address the root causes of exploitation, including poverty, digital exclusion, and lack of opportunity

  • Legal reform to dismantle gender bias and ensure exploiters are held accountable

  • Capacity-building for social services to collaborate effectively with headteachers and community leaders in safeguarding young people

Above all, we must collectively challenge the platforms and cultural narratives that frame sexual exploitation as empowerment or aspiration. Protecting young people means confronting both the global tech systems that enable exploitation and the local vulnerabilities that drive it.

Citation: Anciones Anguita, K., Checa Romero, M. (2025). Making Money on OnlyFans? A Study on the Promotion of Erotic Content Platforms on Social Media and their Influence on Adolescents. Sexuality & Culture. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-025-10389-2