Teach Us Consent has been awarded $4 million from the Australian Government Office for Women to develop a digital sexual literacy education project for young Australians. Its primary audience is young people, though we're also developing resources to support parents and educators in having these conversations with young people in their lives. In late August we finalised recruitment, and now our research team is assessing evidence and conducting formal consultations with experts, researchers and the sector, before defining our precise objectives and scope.

Our core audience is young Australians aged 16–25 - adolescents and young adults forming their own understanding of sex, relationships and intimacy. We're particularly focused on reaching young men and boys, who more are more likely to intentionally watch pornography, recognising the significant role porn can play in shaping expectations around masculinity, sex and relationships at this life stage.

We're also committed to ensuring the project reaches diverse cohorts of young people including LGBTQIA+, First Nations, culturally and linguistically diverse, regional, and people with disabilities, who don't always have access to education and resources that reflect their experiences. The project aims to be intersectional in all its resources, with specific content developed for priority populations where appropriate.

We know young people are accessing porn at high rates online, with 86% of young Australians having encountered pornography by the age of 16, with half seeing it by age 13. For some, this can be a place for exploring sexuality and identity. However, exposure can also carry real risks. This project aims to build critical literacy skills to recognise, understand and respond to these harms, and support young people in making informed decisions about healthy intimacy, consent, and respectful relationships.

Critical thinking is the throughline – giving young people the tools to question what they're seeing and make sense of it for themselves.

No. While pornography is an important part of this project, it isn't the only focus. Young people navigate a much broader sexual media landscape that includes social media, TV and movies, music, digital advertising, gaming, AI chatbots and online influencers. All of these can shape ideas about sex, relationships, gender and consent.

Even when young people understand that pornography isn't always a realistic depiction of sex, it can still shape assumptions about gender roles and what's expected in relationships. This project isn't about assuming young people don't understand this – it's about building the critical thinking skills to challenge the scripts embedded in all this content, wherever it shows up.

This will be Australia's first project of its kind: a digital-first suite of content for young people. Exact formats will be locked in through extensive consultation with sector experts, researchers, service providers and young people themselves. It will also deliver practical resources to aid parents in guiding young people through conversations about sexual content they see online. Select resources will be developed into curriculum-aligned lesson plans and supporting teacher materials, so they can be used in age-appropriate ways during conversations about sexual content seen online.

A digital project allows us to meet young people where they already are online, in a tone and format that speaks to them rather than at them. The quality of school-based relationships and sex education varies significantly across Australia, and it doesn't always meet the needs of all young people - particularly LGBTQIA+, culturally and linguistically diverse, and young people with disability. Young people also don't always want to discuss these topics with parents or teachers. A trusted digital space lets them access evidence-based education in their own time.

Through an extensive consultation process, including focus groups with young people themselves, and the establishment of a diverse and representative Youth Advisory Group of young people aged 18-25, young people have a direct hand in shaping the work rather than being consulted after the fact.

No. Teach Us Consent does not work directly in schools delivering education. Whilst we support school-based learning about respectful relationships, it isn't a silver bullet – it needs to sit alongside a other efforts to reach and engage young people. Teachers are already structurally under-resourced when it comes to consent and respectful relationships. That's why we're developing alternative ways to reach young people online and creating space for them to build these critical skills in their own time, without shame.

We do not see this project as aligning to a binary question of being pro-porn or anti-porn. Our focus is on helping young people navigate the realities of the world they live in. Pornography is a prevalent part of today’s sexual media landscape, and regardless of whether people or organisations think it’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’, most young people will encounter or seek it out.

The evidence tells us that porn affects people in different ways. For some, it may be part of exploring and developing sexuality. At the same time, some porn can shape expectations about sex, relationships, consent and gender in unhealthy or harmful ways.

Ultimately, this project seeks to give young people the knowledge and critical thinking skills they need to understand those influences, investigate how the porn they watch makes them feel and act, make informed choices, and build healthy relationships.

While questions about production of porn are important, they are outside of the scope of this project. Our priority is helping young people think critically about the role pornography plays in shaping expectations about sex, consent and relationships, rather than asking them to sort or evaluate content into “ethical” and “unethical” categories.

Most teens and adolescents, particularly boys and men, are not seeking out curated or paid content – they are more likely to encounter mainstream porn through social media, gaming platforms, group chats or other online spaces, sometimes unintentionally. This project is designed to help them respond to those real-world experiences with critical thinking and accurate information, regardless of how the content is made.

This project is funded by the Australian Government Office for Women. This Project directly supports the ambition under Working for Women: A Strategy for Gender Equality to end violence against women, specifically the outcome that all people live free from violence and are safe at home, school, work, in the community and online.

We've engaged independent evaluators to measure the project's impact against a program logic and theory of change, which is being developed alongside the project itself. This means we can track whether the work is achieving what it set out to do, not just whether it launched.

Resources are expected to be available from mid-2027, with final evaluation completed by December 2027.

We'll be sharing updates as the project develops. Sign up to our newsletter, follow us on Instagram, or submit a question below that you'd like to see answered as this work progresses.