Intimacy for sale

I saw a post by sports commentator Stephen A. Smith about OnlyFans; that the top creator on OnlyFans makes more than the best NBA players make.

Meaning, Americans value porn stars as entertainers more than NBA players.

In fact, Americans value porn stars more than most any other category of people. Americans spend hours and billions of dollars watching porn.

This is the type of person who is viewing OnlyFans:

• Around 75% of viewers are male.

• Roughly 90% of male viewers are married.

• The highest paying age group is 35-44 year olds, probably because it is a site that requires the viewer to have disposable income.

How ironic that people claim they do not have money to raise a family, to pay for rent, to afford gas and groceries, and yet 210 million watchers are helping fund a 5 billion dollar plus industry. This is only a fraction of the broader 100 billion dollar porn industry. Porn is an unnecessary and dark outgrowth of an unhealthy culture. Imagine a world in which this large part of our GDP went to something that made the world more innovative and helpful.

Just as difficult to digest, the average content creator looks like:

• Around 75% of creators are female.

• 1.2 million out of 1.4 million creators are between the ages of 18-24 years old.

• The average creator makes 150 dollars a month, but this data is skewed because the top earners make millions per month, meaning most creators make nothing.

These stats are just as depressing as the viewer stats. Young women are looking for a way to make extra money, so they sell revealing photos and videos of their body online. But most are just exposing themselves for no return.

Worse, if there are truly 1.2 million 18-24 year old girls making content on OnlyFans, means greater than 1 out of every 10 girls 18-24 year old is on OnlyFans.

Go to a college campus, look at the girls there, and realize just how alarmingly high that number is.

Why does this conversation matter?

It matters because for those who are married, those who watch porn are twice as likely to get divorced as those who do not.

It matters because pornography rewires your brain’s reward pathways, forever altar expectations in relationships, and impact socialization in general.

It matters for the people on the other side of the screen. The porn industry is full of unethical and illegal sex practices, placing men and women and children at risk.

It matters for the kids we are raising up in this and the next generations. We have a group of kids who now celebrate porn stars and think it’s fine to post nude or erotic photos online. If we desire married, stable, healthy relationships; the pornographic world we’ve accepted is a recipe for disaster.

It does not take make research to understand that faithful married relationships provide the best outcome for the married adults, for children, and for the communities surrounding the couple.

Good marriages change the world.

I’m raising two boys who will one day be tempted by lust into viewing pornography. As of now, my wife and I have decided on these actions to help them create a culture where temptation is lessened:

• Celebrate and showcase healthy relationships, especially other marriages.

• Teach them the ways of being a gentleman, teaching them how to treat the mother, their grandmother, and girls at church.

• Limit distractions like phones and tablets and televisions.

• Increase opportunity. Keep them busy. Help to establish lofty goals and pursue those goals alongside them.

What did I miss? Leave me a comment, I’d love to get your thoughts.

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