With minimum-wage jobs no longer being sufficient to pay off skyrocketing college tuition, rent, and insurance, many young people are looking for creative ways of earning additional income. One option that has recently grown in popularity is in sugar dating, in which a sugar baby, who is typically a teenager or young adult, is given financial compensation and lavish gifts in exchange for providing various services for sugar daddies or mommies, who are usually much older. This exchange creates a transactional relationship with an unbalanced power dynamic. The services required by sugar daddies and mommies range from basic accompaniment to going on dates to sexual intercourse. Sugar dating is more common than one might think, with approximately 8% of Gen-Z and millennials in the United States participating.

Social media, especially TikTok, fosters the misconception that sugar dating is a glamorous way of life in which sugar babies receive expensive gifts, thousands of dollars, and vacations from older, wealthy individuals without needing to lift a finger. This leads those who are experiencing financial hardships and those from disadvantaged backgrounds to sign up for an opportunity to receive what they believe is essentially “free money.” 

With a skewed perception of sugar dating thanks to sickly-sweet depictions of sugar dating online, many young people enter this lifestyle blindly, and do not notice when the line between sugar dating, prostitution, and sex trafficking is blurred. Not only do sugar babies often fail to understand that their “relationship” could be trafficking, but police and other authority figures also struggle to tell the difference. For example, in 2013, a woman was raped during her second date with a sugar daddy she met on SeekingArrangement, a sugar dating website. When she reported the crime, the police viewed her as a sex worker who was trying to “swindle” her client into giving her more money. The case was ultimately dropped.

Even if sugar babies are not raped, the presence of coercion and other manipulatory tactics, along with unequal power structures as a result of gaps in age and wealth, can quickly turn sugar dating turn into sexual assault and sex trafficking. An interview with sugar babies found that many “feel pressured to have sex or grant unlimited phone/online access to sugar daddies/mamas,” because they feel they “owe it” to their sugar daddy. They added that they do not want to create a circumstance in which they “decline to do something in the ‘arrangement,’” that would give the sugar daddy reason “to [not] pay the allowance until the sugar baby does whatever he requests.” Megan Lundstrom, the Director of Research and Co-Founder of The Avery Center and a survivor of human trafficking and sugaring, has spoken out on the manipulation she experienced from her sugar daddy. According to Lundstrom, “I disclosed to him that is what I was doing at the time to pay my bills. So for him, it was just establishing that trauma bond and then taking over my money.” 

As a result of sugar dating sites like SeekingArrangement and Sugar Daddy Meet being known for “actively recruit[ing] financially struggling college students to become sugar babies,” pedophiles and traffickers have flocked to these websites to find vulnerable young people and children under the age of consent to exploit. A minor named Alicia shared that she started using a sugar dating website at age 14 to converse with several men, including a technology executive from Seattle whom she entered into a “relationship.” Speaking about the men she encountered online, she stated “They feel like they own you.” When the technology executive raped her, she did not go to the police because, according to Alicia, “[A]re they really going to do anything?… He has a lot of money and a lot of power.”

Thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, cases like Alicia’s have only increased. In 2020, “there were more than 37,000 reports of online enticement of minors, up nearly 100 percent from the previous year.” Chiquita Tillman, author of I am a Ruby, Not a Sapphire and a survivor of human trafficking, explains the correlation, revealing “Just as we used Zoom to get back into the classroom and attend work meetings, traffickers also adapted to find new ways to manipulate people by using various online platforms.”

Frankly speaking, we will only see a decrease in sugar dating when the minimum wage significantly increases and when tuition, health, and rent become more affordable. These financial burdens and others are what drive young people to become sugar babies and put themselves in risky situations with older men, women, and even traffickers.

For now, there are several steps that can be taken to cut down on exploitation that happens under the guise of sugar dating. Brandon Wade, SeekingArrangement’s CEO and founder, has revealed that his site is now using software and artificial intelligence to scan passports and state-issued photo IDs to ensure that only people over the age of 18 are using the website. “[I]f we suspect somebody is a minor they automatically get suspended.” While he has admitted this is not “100% foolproof,” it has cut back on at least some minors using Seeking Arrangement. Hopefully other sugar dating sites will follow suit and implement similar age verification procedures. 

Another preventative measure could be requiring background checks on all sugar daddy applicants to ensure that those with histories of crimes like rape and sexual assault are not allowed to participate. However, given that these crimes are not often reported and that those with wealth and power are not always punished for their crimes, this would fail to filter out dangerous people. Thus, the burden falls on the sugar babies to vet the sugar daddies themselves. Minors, women, and minorities from financially disadvantaged backgrounds are the most frequently targeted groups by traffickers and exploiters, so these people must be especially aware of their safety on sugar dating sites. 

Hopefully, with more research and awareness, we will see legislation passed to protect sugar babies who have been coerced, raped, and sexually assaulted. Then, more people will be aware that sugar dating is not as sweet as it seems.