If you’ve ever wondered how students are affording £6 coffees and £50 concert tickets and rent prices that make us cry, here’s one possible answer. Sex work among students is more common than many may assume and financial hardship, stigma and secrecy all play a part.
In a survey of 109 Kingston students, a striking 50.5% said they’ve thought about going into sex work and 48.6% said they know someone who dropped out of uni to pursue OnlyFans full-time. Knowing someone who’s become an content creator is almost as common as knowing someone who hasn’t returned their book to the library.
Many students are drawn to OnlyFans over traditional jobs because it offers flexible hours, remote work and significantly higher earning potential than minimum-wage roles. This choice is increasingly normalised by shifting public attitudes. A YouGov poll found that 51% of Britons believe sex work should not be stigmatised, while 43% think it should be regarded legally and socially like other forms of employment.
Lily, whose name has been changed for anonymity, is a third-year who turned to OnlyFans after being unable to find a job. “I was applying everywhere,” said Lily. “From retail, cafes to fast food chains. I managed to get one interview and I didn’t hear back after.”
Starting an OnlyFans account wasn’t something she had previously considered. Like many students, it began as a joke, something laughed about during late-night conversations. When rent and bills became unmanageable, the idea stopped being hypothetical. “I started off with selling feet pics and it spiralled from there,” Lily explains. “I earn more in a month than I made working as a receptionist for half a year.”
Lily posts a mix of explicit images and videos and interacts directly with subscribers through private messages. She declined to give exact figures but described the income as enough to live by.
A major study by Swansea University surveying 6,700 students across the UK found that 5% had engaged in some form of sex work and 22% had at least considered it. This means nearly a quarter of students nationwide have had a fleeting moment of wondering whether selling feet pics is really morally compromising if it pays for groceries.
It’s also worth mentioning that OnlyFans and sex work are not strictly the same thing. One is a subscription-based platform where creators can post a wide range of content. While the site is best known for pornographic content material, not all creators produce sexual content.
In the end, students are just trying to survive university in whatever way makes sense – whether that’s selling clothes on Vinted, pulling 12-hour shifts at pubs or as our data suggests, seriously contemplating a ring light purchase. If the idea of students funding their degrees through sex work feels uncomfortable, maybe the real question isn’t why they’re doing it – but why they have to.
