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 Sex cam industry models: 'We were hired while we were in school'

It was afternoon when Isabella was leaving for school when someone handed her a piece of paper. The paper read, “Do you want to make money using your beauty?”

She says a studio looking for models in the Colombian capital of Bogota was apparently trying to attract teenage girls who were going to school.

At 17, she was the mother of a two-year-old child who she desperately needed money to raise. So she decided to find out more about it.

When she got there, she says, she discovered it was a homemade sex cam studio run by a couple. The house had eight rooms decorated like bedrooms.

Studios range from small, low-budget operations to large-scale businesses, with individual rooms set up with lights, computers, webcams and internet connections.

Models perform sex acts in front of a camera that is broadcast worldwide. Viewers can also message the models and make requests through people called ‘monitors’.

We are not using Isabella’s real name. She started work the next day, even though it is illegal for studios in Colombia to hire people under 18 as webcam models.

Isabella told the BBC that she was not given a written contract stating how much she would be paid or what her rights were.

“They put me on the line to stream without teaching me anything. They said ‘this is a camera, let’s get started.’”

She says that shortly after, the studio suggested she live stream from school. While the rest of her class was learning English, Isabella secretly took out her phone and began recording herself sitting at her desk.

Viewers soon began requesting specific sex acts from her. So she asked her teacher for permission to go to the bathroom and locked herself in the toilet and started fulfilling the customers’ orders.

Her teacher had no idea what was happening and soon she started doing the same thing in other classes. ‘I thought this was for my son, I was doing it for him. It gave me courage.’

Old accounts and fake eyes

The global sex cam industry is expanding rapidly. The number of webcam users worldwide has almost tripled since 2017. According to analytics company Sam Rush, this number reached almost 1.3 billion in April 2025.

According to Final Web, an organization representing the adult webcam sector in Colombia, there are about 400,000 models in Colombia, more than in any other country in the world. In addition, there are 12,000 sex cam studios operating across the country.

These studios film the models and make them available to global webcam platforms. These platforms broadcast these videos to millions of paying viewers around the world. Those who watch these videos make requests to the models, give them tips and even buy them gifts.

Many of these models work in studios because they do not have the privacy, equipment and internet connection available at home. Many of them are poor or living with their parents because they are too young.

Performers told the BBC that in a country where a third of the population is poor, studios often try to lure people with the promise of easy money.

Models say that some studios are well-run and provide technical and other support, but abuse and exploitation are common in most studios.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro likens these studio owners to “slave masters” who lure women like Isabella into believing they can make good money.

Webcam platforms in the US and Europe such as Bongacams, Chatterbit, Live Jasmine and StripChat are the biggest platforms broadcasting content from studios. They have verification systems in place to ensure that all performers are over 18.

Under European and US law, the distribution of any sexual material involving people under the age of 18 is prohibited.

However, models say that if a studio wants to recruit underage girls, the system can be easily cheated.

One way to do this is to reuse the accounts of models who are of legal working age but no longer work. Their accounts are then given to underage girls.

Isabella says that is how she used to come to Chatterbit and Strip Chat when she was 17.

Isabella, who is now 18, says that “the studio owners said it didn’t matter that I was underage.”

“They used another woman’s account and then I started working under that identity.”

Other models the BBC spoke to said that studios provided them with fake IDs. Model Kenny says it helped her get on the porn scene at the age of 17

‘They tricked me’

But when the platform and studio took their cut, Isabella says she only received 174,000 Colombian pesos (about $42 or £31), far less than she had expected.

She believes the studio paid her a much lower percentage than agreed and stole most of her earnings.

“The money was just a joke and they spent some of it on milk and nappies. They tricked me,” she says.

Izabella is still in school. She only did webcam modelling for a few months before quitting.

She says the treatment she received at such a young age left her deeply traumatised. She cried constantly, which prompted her mother to arrange for her to see a psychologist.

Isabella and six former studio employees have filed a formal complaint with the state prosecutor’s office. They collectively accuse the studio of exploiting underage girls, forced labor, and financial abuse.

“Some of my videos are still online, even though I was underage at the time,” she says.

She explains that she feels helpless in trying to get them removed.

“It had a profound effect on me, and I don’t even want to think about it anymore,” she says.