Teach Us Consent has been awarded $4 million from the Commonwealth Office for Women to develop a digital porn literacy education campaign 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. We're in the very early stages, and our research team is currently deep in the evidence and formal consultations with the sector before we finalise our 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 pornography can play in shaping expectations around masculinity, sex and relationships at this life stage.

We're also committed to ensuring the campaign 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.

We know young people are accessing pornography at high rates online, with 75% of young Australians having encountered porn by the age of 18 and the average of exposure being 13 years of age. For some, this can be a positive experience – a place for exploring sexuality and identity. However, exposure can also carry real risks. This campaign 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. Young people engage with pornography for a range of reasons – curiosity, exploring their sexuality, or as part of the much wider media landscape they navigate alongside social media, gaming and entertainment. 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 campaign 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 campaign 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 digital sexual literacy.

A digital campaign 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+, CALD, and disadvantaged young people. 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.

Select resources will also be developed into curriculum-aligned lesson plans and supporting teacher materials, so they can be used in age-appropriate ways alongside conversations about digital sexual literacy.

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

This campaign is funded by the Commonwealth Office for Women. This Campaign 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 campaign's impact against a program logic and theory of change, which is being developed alongside the campaign 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.

School-based learning isn't a silver bullet – it needs to sit alongside a whole-of-community approach. 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'll be sharing updates as the campaign 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.

You can find all of our reports and submissions here.