Jonathan Bha­gan

In re­cent times, both Swe­den and Chi­na have banned On­ly­Fans due to the dan­gers of its adult con­tent. Chi­na al­so has a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy for adult con­tent, but Swe­den still al­lows cer­tain types of on­line adult con­tent.

Ju­liana Liu, writ­ing for CNN in De­cem­ber 2024, stat­ed as fol­lows: “On­ly­Fans, a pop­u­lar sub­scrip­tion-based web­site known for its sex­u­al­ly ex­plic­it con­tent, is now blocked in Chi­na af­ter a pe­ri­od of be­ing ac­ces­si­ble for a pe­ri­od. So­cial me­dia users post­ing on X had no­ticed the site was work­ing in late No­vem­ber, which checks by CNN were able to con­firm. Bei­jing gen­er­al­ly blocks ac­cess to thou­sands of web­sites at any giv­en time, in­clud­ing those that host pornog­ra­phy, which is il­le­gal in the coun­try. The gov­ern­ment has adopt­ed a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy to­ward sex­u­al­ly ex­plic­it con­tent.”

This sort of cen­sor­ship is ex­pect­ed in a com­mu­nist coun­try like Chi­na that val­ues so­cial co­he­sion above West­ern lib­er­tar­i­an ideals.

How­ev­er, Swe­den has banned the pur­chase of sex­u­al acts on­line, which cen­sors On­ly­Fans and a va­ri­ety of sex­u­al­ly ex­plic­it web­sites.

Su­pan­tha Mukher­jee and Si­mon John­son’s ar­ti­cle, post­ed in May 2025, was re­port­ed in USA To­day as say­ing: “Swe­den’s par­lia­ment on Tues­day passed a new law that pro­hibits the pur­chase of sex­u­al acts on­line, plac­ing re­stric­tions on plat­forms such as On­ly­Fans.

“Un­der the new law, it will be il­le­gal to of­fer com­pen­sa­tion to an­oth­er per­son to per­form a sex­u­al act re­mote­ly on­line. The law does, how­ev­er, al­low users to watch and pay for pre-record­ed sex­u­al ma­te­r­i­al or live streams that they have not re­quest­ed.

“This is about dig­i­talised pros­ti­tu­tion, where the bound­aries be­tween pornog­ra­phy and hu­man traf­fick­ing are blurred but where ex­ploita­tion and abuse are present,” TT news agency quot­ed So­cial De­mo­c­rat law­mak­er San­na Back­eskog say­ing dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary de­bate over the law.”

A New York Post ar­ti­cle from May 2025 not­ed that users could face prison sen­tences, equat­ing on­line pur­chas­es to tra­di­tion­al pros­ti­tu­tion. While this may seem ex­treme, there is ev­i­dence to link On­ly­Fans to hu­man traf­fick­ing and pros­ti­tu­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to an­ti-hu­man traf­fick­ing NGO Ex­o­dus Road, On­ly­Fans has been proven to host child sex­u­al abuse ma­te­r­i­al, al­so known as child pornog­ra­phy. In many cas­es, hu­man traf­fick­ers use On­ly­Fans as a store­front to mon­e­tise their hu­man sex slaves, some of whom may be chil­dren.

The Na­tion­al Cen­tre on Child Sex­u­al Ex­ploita­tion (NCOSE) al­so re­port­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions that re­vealed over 35 chil­dren who had footage be­ing sold on On­ly­Fans.

Giv­en T&T’s bat­tle with crime and sex­u­al vi­o­lence, a ban on On­ly­Fans may as­sist in clos­ing off av­enues for traf­fick­ers to mon­e­tise their vic­tims lo­cal­ly. Fur­ther­more, the use of On­ly­Fans to pur­chase adult con­tent is caus­ing a drain on the na­tion’s for­eign ex­change re­serves.

There is al­so sig­nif­i­cant da­ta show­ing that pornog­ra­phy ad­dic­tion leads to worse men­tal health out­comes. In the 2023 study en­ti­tled “Pornog­ra­phy: A Con­cealed Be­hav­iour with Se­ri­ous Con­se­quences by Sharon Ja­cob et al, young adults in Rhode Is­land were sur­veyed, and the study found that about 6.2 per cent of young adults met cri­te­ria for prob­lem­at­ic porn use, which was as­so­ci­at­ed with near­ly dou­ble the risk of de­pres­sion and over twice the odds of sui­ci­dal ideation.

An­oth­er 2023 study, en­ti­tled “Phys­i­o­log­i­cal, Psy­choso­cial and Sub­stance Abuse Ef­fects of Pornog­ra­phy Ad­dic­tion: A Nar­ra­tive Re­view by Haseeb Mehmood Qadr et al, not­ed trou­bling phys­i­o­log­i­cal im­pacts of porn use as fol­lows: “Pre­ma­ture ejac­u­la­tion, erec­tile dys­func­tion, li­bido, and arousal dys­func­tion are the most of­ten re­port­ed sex­u­al dys­func­tions in the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion.

Some unique stud­ies as­so­ciate chron­ic mas­tur­ba­tion, de­layed ejac­u­la­tion, high­er anx­i­ety lev­els, and sex­u­al dys­func­tion with in­creased con­sump­tion of porno­graph­ic con­tent. In a sam­ple of Eu­ro­pean het­ero­sex­u­al men who had com­plained of a prob­lem with de­creased li­bido, Car­val­heira et al, ex­am­ined the as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween mas­tur­ba­tion and the us­age of pornog­ra­phy and sex­u­al de­sire.

It was shown that more than half of the study par­tic­i­pants who had no­ticed a sub­stan­tial drop in li­bido over the pre­vi­ous six months of the eval­u­a­tion, had used porno­graph­ic ma­te­ri­als at least once a week. A study in 2015 on high school stu­dents dis­cov­ered a cor­re­la­tion be­tween fre­quent porn con­sump­tion and poor sex­u­al de­sire.”

There is, there­fore, strong ev­i­dence that pornog­ra­phy in gen­er­al rep­re­sents a threat to pub­lic health, with On­ly­Fans in par­tic­u­lar be­ing con­nect­ed to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and hu­man traf­fick­ing in some cas­es.

I would like to en­cour­age the Gov­ern­ment of T&T to con­sid­er ban­ning all pur­chas­es of on­line pornog­ra­phy in a bid to save for­eign ex­change and im­prove the men­tal health of our so­ci­ety. To make such a ban ef­fec­tive, a part­ner­ship with the banks to pre­vent T&T cred­it cards from be­ing used on web­sites like On­ly­Fans would be need­ed, as sim­ply block­ing the web­sites would re­sult in the use of VP­Ns to cir­cum­vent the block.

I trust that all of T&T’s re­li­gious lead­ers will be on board with this pol­i­cy sug­ges­tion, as most re­li­gions and spir­i­tu­al­i­ties recog­nise the dan­gers of pornog­ra­phy to the hu­man mind.

The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has la­belled On­ly­Fans a “cor­rupt West­ern dis­ease”; cit­i­zens of T&T should take this warn­ing se­ri­ous­ly and en­cour­age the Gov­ern­ment to ban it.