Abstract
We are a group of researchers and educators from Aotearoa New Zealand (Massey University), and Australia (Edith Cowan University), who collaborate on research, grant applications, scholarly articles, policy debates and youth-led interventions to define and co-create strategies that support young people in navigating and processing their experiences with online sexual content.
We welcome the chance to submit to this parliamentary inquiry, and thank the Aotearoa New Zealand parliament for the opportunity to contribute our expertise and offer input into your deliberations. We are encouraged that the terms of reference stipulate that "not all young people experience the world in the same way, and there may be a range of experiences online for different young people, and they are all valid perspectives". This has certainly been our experience across a range of projects speaking with young people, and via accounts from parents and young people. Teens are not a homogenous group and as such have diverse needs, perspectives and experiences.
Having agreed with this foundational proposition, we turn to the substantive issues confronting the inquiry with particular attention paid to teens’ encounters with online sexual content (which includes access to pornography, sexting and image-based sexual harassment and abuse) which is the focus of our submission.
Document Type
Report
Date of Publication
2025
Funding Information
Australian Research Council
School
School of Arts and Humanities
Grant Number
DP190102435
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Publisher
Edith Cowan University
Identifier
Giselle Woodley: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7521-5001
Lelia Green: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4587-4679