‘What Happened to Sex?’ investigates the impact exposure to unregulated, explicit sexual content online is having on the sexual behaviour, health, and wellbeing of a generation. From unregulated pornography to dark romance fiction and manosphere influencers, this film reveals how algorithms are reshaping sexual behaviour and the devastating physical, psychological and legal consequences.
Sex therapist and mother of three boys, Jo Robertson has spent twenty years asking why we have sex the way we do. Now she’s uncovering an urgent new answer: the internet. In a reflective and personal journey, she takes us into the sexual landscape teenagers today are living in, showing the type of violent sexual messaging they are being exposed to. From memes about choking, to album covers depicting women in submissive poses and pop songs that treat strangulation as foreplay, this content is playing out in a myriad of ways across social and mainstream media.
Through deeply honest and thought-provoking interviews, young people reveal how their intimate lives are being shaped by the sexual content they are witnessing. Young women describe terrifying sexual encounters they felt powerless to stop, having absorbed a cultural script that told them this was normal. Young men talk about compulsive pornography and the chasm between what they consume online and experiences of real-life intimacy.
A confronting, necessary documentary about consent, harm, and what it means to grow up online.