Vol. 15 No. 2 (2024): MEDIA EDUCATION – Studi, ricerche e buone pratiche
Articles

Onlyfans, un’indagine per comprendere il rapporto degli adolescenti con intimità e nuove vetrinizzazioni

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  • Francesco Pira
Francesco Pira
Dipartimento di Civiltà Antiche e Moderne, Università degli Studi di Messina, Italia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/me-16155

Published 2024-12-30

Keywords

  • OnlyFans,
  • generation Z,
  • social identity,
  • sexuality

Copyright (c) 2024 Francesco Pira

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The image is central in social relations, a self packaged to present itself to the public, constructed to be liked, to collect likes and to be shared, commented on. This is a true externalization of our individuality, which increasingly places the display of the body as other than self at the center (Pira, 2017). In this sense we are witnessing a transformation of intimacy, the resulting representation of the self appearing as a public expression in a medial key. In this path precisely the dimensions of the body and sexuality seem to assume a centrality that gives them a strong relevance in the identity construction of each person. In this perspective, we intend to provide an analysis on the Onlyfans phenomenon through the anonymous administration of a self-completion questionnaire in CAWI mode, which involved 1116 respondents between the ages of 14 and 30. The title of the survey was “The Impact of OnlyFans on Generation Z.” In fact, the platform is mainly associated with sexual content. Based on the assumption that OnlyFans creators are in a unique position, at the intersection of professional social media content creation and sex work, we tried to identify what attitude young people interviewed have toward the OnlyFans platform; to understand what is their perception of the social and the definition they give in relation to the content conveyed; and to understand what their attitude is in relation to the perceptions of sexuality and individual freedom of expression.

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