This Article is duplicated from Discord's Safety Blog

How Discord Is Building Safer Experiences for Teens

Discord Safety, February 9, 2026

Our continued investment in teen safety and wellbeing

We’re proud to be a space where teens want to be - from playing games with friends and connecting over shared interests to expressing themselves. We recognize the meaningful role Discord plays in teens' lives, and we’re committed to staying true to what they enjoy and to being a place they want to return to. Fulfilling that commitment means working to provide safer spaces that are shaped with teens in mind, and designed to help give them agency over their experience.

On Safer Internet Day, we want to be clear on where we stand. Discord is committed to building safer experiences for teens, investing in this work proactively, and doing it in ways that respect our users’ privacy and maintaining what makes our platform so uniquely Discord.

‍That’s why, starting in early March, we are proactively rolling out safety features worldwide that will help ensure age-appropriate experiences for everyone while preserving the genuine community atmosphere that makes Discord special. These updates introduce stronger default safety settings and clearer boundaries around age-restricted experiences through age assurance.

Expanding age-appropriate safety experiences worldwide

At the end of last year, we launched age assurance and teen-by-default experiences in the UK and Australia. In the UK, these updates helped us meet new regulatory requirements for online services. In Australia, where Discord is considered a communications service and not subject to the Social Media Minimum Age requirements, we saw this moment as an opportunity to further demonstrate our ongoing commitment to teen safety by proactively providing users with a teen-appropriate default experience. This work has helped us understand how we can build age-appropriate protections that work for teens globally, while ensuring our user's experience on Discord remains easy and accessible.

Now, we are expanding our age assurance toolkit and teen-by-default safety protections to the rest of the world. This includes stronger default safety settings, filters for potentially sensitive content, and age-appropriate access to spaces and features designed to support safer experience across Discord. Most of these protections are already in place by default. Age assurance is only required if a user wants to access age-restricted content and features or update the teen-by-default safety settings. For adult users, this can be completed through a straightforward, privacy-forward process.

This is an important step in making safer, more enjoyable and age-appropriate experiences for teens everywhere, not just specific regions. This work was done to help teens feel supported and in control of their experience, while giving families greater confidence and ensuring adults can seamlessly access the features they want.

When would users need to verify their age group?

Users are only prompted to verify their age group when they attempt to access certain age-restricted content, settings, or features. After completing age assurance, users won’t be asked to verify again for future age-restricted actions. A user may be prompted to verify their age group if they attempt to:

• Unblur media flagged by our Sensitive Content Filters or attempt to change any of the default Sensitive Content Filter settings to “Show” sensitive content.
• Turn off Message Requests (they are enabled by default to help you screen out unwanted DMs from your DM list).
• Access age-restricted channels and servers.
• Speak in a stage channel.
• Toggle on age-restricted commands setting.

‍Importantly, this does not mean everyone will need to confirm their age just to use Discord. Many people can use Discord exactly as they do today, without ever being asked to confirm their age.

Default safety settings for everyone

Here's how this works: Everyone starts with our robust safety features turned on, regardless of age. We call this "teen-by-default" because these settings establish a clear safety baseline designed with teens in mind, with flexibility for adults to customize their experience. Adults can always choose to verify their age and change them, or leave the settings as-is. Unless a user is confirmed to be an adult, these safety settings stay in place and can’t be changed.

The default settings include:

• Content Filters: Discord users will need to be age-assured as adults in order to unblur sensitive content or turn off the setting.
• Age-gated Spaces: Only users who are age-assured as adults will be able to access age-restricted channels, servers, and app commands.
• Message Request Inbox: Direct messages from people a user may not know are routed to a separate inbox by default, and access to modify this setting is limited to age-assured adult users.
• Friend Request Alerts: People will receive warning prompts for friend requests from users they may not know.
• Stage Restrictions: Only age-assured adults may speak on stage in servers.

These defaults build on Discord’s existing safety architecture, ensuring teen users have strong protections while still giving verified adults flexibility over their experience.

A flexible, privacy-forward approach to age assurance

There’s no perfect solution to age assurance and we don’t think that there should be, which is why we are going to be releasing a toolkit of methods designed to prioritize accuracy and privacy.

Age Inference: Reducing friction for adult users

As part of this toolkit, we are introducing age inference to help us determine with high confidence whether a user on our platform is an adult.  We leverage technologies that help predict whether a user is an adult with high likelihood based on patterns of user behavior and other signals associated with their account on Discord.

For many adult users, this means access to age‑restricted content and features without needing to complete an explicit age verification flow. It’s a straightforward  way for us to maintain age-appropriate experiences. This model is part of our broader toolkit and we will continue to improve it as we learn more.

This isn’t always perfect, but we’ve tuned the model to be highly accurate. In the event that a user is placed incorrectly into the wrong age group, they can always reconfirm their age or remove the assigned age group through our age assurance flow and update their experience accordingly.

Additional age assurance methods when needed

We also offer other assurance methods through our collaboration with trusted, privacy-forward partners, such as facial age estimation and ID scan, all designed to minimize data use and maximize user control. We will continue exploring and validating additional age assurance approaches, with the goal of expanding options and giving users choices that work best for them.

After completing a chosen method, users will receive confirmation via a direct message from our official Discord account. A user’s assigned age group can be viewed at any time in “My Account” settings. Users can also go to “My Account” settings to appeal by retrying the process. We currently only prompt users to age-assure when they are in the Discord app and trying to access age-restricted content or update specific safety settings. We do not send emails or text messages about our age assurance process or results.

Key privacy protections of our age-assurance approach include:

• On-device processing: Video selfies for facial age estimation never leave a user’s device
• Quick deletion: Identity documents submitted to our vendors are deleted quickly—in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.
• Straightforward verification: In most cases, users complete the process once and their Discord experience adapts to their verified age group. Users may be asked to use multiple methods only when more information is needed to assign an age group.
• Private status: A user's age verification status is only available to that user and cannot be seen by others

We’re intentional about selecting and working with age-assurance partners with strong privacy practices and limit data collection to what’s strictly necessary for age assurance.

Discord Teen Council: Building with teens, not just for them

Safety features work best when they are informed by the people they are meant to support. That’s why we’re excited to share that we are launching Discord’s first Teen Council, with recruitment opening to teens (13-17 years old) beginning in the United States. Applications will be open until May 2026.

The Teen Council will bring real teen perspectives directly into safety, wellbeing and experience discussions, helping shape future features and platform updates. It’s an important step toward ensuring Discord continues to reflect what teens actually want, need and enjoy, not just what adults think they need.

Go here to fill out the application.  We will be announcing the Teen Council's formation and top Council priorities late Summer 2026.

Looking ahead

Discord’s teen-appropriate experience by default builds on Discord’s broader safety ecosystem, which includes tools and resources such as Ignore, Family Center, Teen Safety Assist, Warning System, Guardian’s Guide, and more. Together, these efforts reflect Discord’s commitment to creating privacy-forward, age-appropriate experiences that empower teens to engage thoughtfully, connect meaningfully, and develop lifelong digital well-being skills.

That being said, this is ongoing work and we are not done. In the months ahead, we’ll be introducing additional safety features and updates as part of our broader commitment to teen safety and wellbeing on Discord. Building a safer Discord takes continual and collaborative effort. We’re committed to doing that work thoughtfully, and alongside the communities who make Discord special.

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N.B. This Article is duplicated from Discord's Safety Blog

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