Our young people learn how things are done from each of us.
Mums and dads, aunties, uncles, nans and pops, Elders, brothers and sisters, teachers, friends.
Our kids learn from us every day.
But these days, there are new voices our kids are listening to, and some of them can be real bad.
On the internet and social media, there are lots of influencers and people who get in our kids' ears and spread nasty and disrespectful stuff.
If our kids hear enough of these online voices, it can lead them to say or do bad things in the real world.
Our kids may not deliberately want to hear or see bad stuff, or even realise it's bad at first.
But once they watch one of these videos, engage with a post, or search or share content amongst friends, the social media algorithm thinks they want to see more.
So more and more will show up in their feed.
It's like if you watch one funny dog video, all of a sudden you'll be shown hundreds of them.
Unfortunately, there's nothing funny about what our kids might be seeing and hearing and how it affects their attitudes towards women and girls.
Sexist attitudes.
Women should obey their partner.
Plain and simple.
Men hating on women.
Girls lie.
We need to teach them a lesson.
Nasty, hateful language.
You let a woman walk all over you.
You're weak.
Treating women like objects.
Look at the way she dresses, you know she wants it. And on and on and on.
Seeing and hearing these things can give our young people the wrong idea about how women and girls should be treated.
And like a disease, those attitudes can spread.
You neg someone, you insult them while pretending to give them a compliment.
It gives you control.
Bro, stop being such a simp. If you're a simp, you're not a real man.
You're submissive to women.
Oh! A gyatt is a girl's deadly round butt.
The disrespectful noise can be overpowering for our kids.
But the more we know about what they're seeing and hearing, the more we can help muffle and turn off those voices.
Turning down the hate and turning up respect.
Showing our kids that disrespect towards women has never been our way, our culture.
Encouraging them to challenge what they see and hear online and to speak up when they see others spreading hate and disrespect.
So that we can stop disrespect spreading from the online world into the real world.
Learn how you can help our kids drown out the bad influences online at respect.gov.au
And let's stop the disrespect that can lead to violence at the start.
Let's turn up respect.
