The Line is for young people aged 14+ years.

The Line background and content

A collage of four images with a textured yellow and grey background. Image 1 shows a young man on his laptop, 2 shows a woman's hand holding an iPhone and taking a selfie, 3 shows one young man showing his phone to another young man who is reacting in a perplexed way, 4 shows a young man laying in bed on his phone.

The Line helps young people to understand what’s ok and what’s not when it comes to intimate relationships.

The Line background

Our Watch delivers The Line, a primary prevention behaviour change campaign for young people.

Today’s young people are thinking about their own interpersonal relationships and the way people interact around them. As they consider a huge range of issues, from sex and gender, to social media and identity, The Line encourages young people to develop healthy and equal relationships, and to reject violence.

Recognising and respecting ‘the line’ can be confusing. The Line helps young people to understand what’s ok and what’s not when it comes to intimate relationships, and encourages them to call out behaviours that hurt and disrespect others.

Knowing that young people’s needs and concerns vary within and across individuals, cultures, regions, and communities The Line can be relevant to a range of audiences, depending on their age, needs and stages of development, however our advertising and marketing actively targets ages 14+.

The campaign’s long-term goal is to prevent violence against women and children by addressing the drivers of violence against women: condoning of violence against women, men's control of decision-making and limits to women's independence, stereotyped constructions of masculinity and femininity and disrespect towards women and male peer relations that emphasise aggression.

Our Watch officially launched The Line on 8 May 2015. This included launching a new website for The Line and releasing a summary of national research that provides insights into the attitudes of young people in Australia.

The Line is an initiative under the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032 and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services.

Content on The Line

The Line content is assessed against 6 criteria to meet international and national standards for young people. This includes ensuring the content is age and stage appropriate, relevant and youth centered, accurate and evidence-based and avoids harmful communication strategies. Where appropriate, content promotes an intersectional approach to gender equality and provides links to relevant help-seeking services or additional information.

We recognise the right of young people to have a say on issues that affect them, and value young people's voices and perspectives on such issues.

Work with young people needs to be relevant and authentic, using language, images and material that young people are familiar with. Research shows that adult-developed and facilitated programming for adolescents can be seen as boring, repetitive, canned, and condescending. In order to avoid this, The Line is dedicated to working with young people through our research, campaign development and testing processes to ensure that content is engaging and relevant to our audience. Our work with young people uses youth-specific references (such as humour, abbreviated words, emojis, mild course language) that may not resonate with adults.

Other research