Discord now lets parents control who contacts their teens, but messages stay private

Discord is expanding the safety controls parents and guardians have access to in its Family Center, including increased visibility of their teens’ activity, allowing guardians to control sensitive content filtering and data privacy settings, and giving them more control over who can DM their teens. 

New Social Permissions toggles will allow guardians to choose whether their teens can receive direct messages only from friends or from anyone who’s a member of the same servers as them. However, Discord is still promising teens that, “As always, guardians can’t see the content of the messages you send.” So guardians will have some control over how accessible their kids are to other users, but still won’t have access to their messages. 

Discord will also be giving teens the option to notify their parents or guardians when they report someone, although the details of the report will remain private, just like their messages. Family Center will also show more data in the activity summary, including total purchases, total call minutes, and top users and servers, all over a seven-day period. As with the current activity summary, teens can see the same info their guardians see. 

Family Center is still voluntary for both teens and guardians — teens have to give their parents a QR code to scan to connect the accounts, then approve the connection after scanning. Family Center allows guardians to see an overview of what their teens are up to through the activity summary, but they aren’t able to directly control which servers their kids are part of or who they’re friends with on Discord. 

The expanded visibility and parental controls come amidst a wave of age-gating across the internet, including on Discord, which began implementing age verification in certain regions earlier this year. Discord’s CEO was also among the social media leaders called before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year to face the families of children who died following cyberbullying and online abuse on their platforms. Social media platforms are under increasing pressure from proposals like the Kids Online Safety Act, and Discord — like several others — is trying to demonstrate that it can take care of matters on its own.