How the Web transformed prostitution

She’s part of a group of prostitutes who some have called the profession’s silent majority: independent, part-time, doing it as a matter of choice after entering the business by placing their own ad on public classified sites, and often keeping the work private from friends and family.

“When you take the profile of Internet prostitutes versus street prostitutes, you find there’s more education, and that more work temporarily, then exit,” says Scott Cunningham, an economist at Baylor University who has studied the impact of the Internet on prostitution markets. “They also are also significantly less likely to work for a pimp.”

Internet prostitutes even look different than street prostitutes, according to Cunningham. He found that when Craigslist first entered a new area – this was in the days when it still had its “erotic services” category – the body weight of the women advertising sex gradually shifted to, in his words, to “a more athletic body type. It moves from less attractive to more attractive in the eyes of the john.”…

The rise of Craigslist has changed how sex is bought and sold in two important ways, says Cunningham, the Baylor economist. First, sex work for women between ages 20 and 40 has mostly shifted from an outdoor activity involving street walking to an indoor activity involving online solicitation and communication. Second, because is it much easier to buy and sell sex, there are simply more prostitutes, and clients, than there were before.