What Is Discord and Is It Safe? A Discord App Review for Parents

Harmful Content 😲

There are more than 19 million different servers on Discord, which means that the potential for inappropriate content is very high. NSFW (not safe for work) servers are common, and include porn, sexual content, and more. There are also servers about violence, conspiracy theories, and just about anything else you could think of.

Predation 🚨

More than 190 million people of all ages use Discord every month. And where there’s a group of strangers meeting on the internet, there’s always the possibility of predators manipulating and abusing children. Because Discord is a well-known destination for gamers (a popular pastime for kids), kids may fall victim to adults pretending to be kids.

Privacy 🔒

Discord’s parental controls (discussed in the next section) can help you manage who can contact your child while they’re using the app. For added security, we recommend a username that doesn’t have personally identifiable information, like full name, school name/mascot, or birth year.

Parental Controls ✅

Discord recently released parental controls (called Family Center) that serve to inform parents about their teen’s activity on the platform. To protect the teen’s privacy, parents cannot see their teen’s actual conversations, but they can see who they are messaging and what communities they join. 

While this is certainly a step in the right direction, Discord did not provide a way to lock these settings (such as with a PIN, which other platforms like Roblox have utilized). At this time, it is unclear if teens will have the ability to turn off Family Center without their parent’s permission. 

The other issue is that kids have to agree to turn on these settings — parents can only complete the Family Center setup if their teen gives them the QR code from their app. 

To set up Family Center:

Parents will need to download Discord and create an account if they don’t already have one. This way, you can link your accounts together.

• On your teen’s Discord app, navigate to “User Settings”.
• Select “Family Center”.
• Generate the QR code under the “Connect with Parent tab”.
• On your phone (the parent), navigate to Family Center 
• Select “Connect with Teen” and scan the QR code. 

Once your teen has accepted the request, then you should see their activity populate in Family Center on your app.

Discord has several other features that you can toggle on to help keep your child safe, but unfortunately, your kid can turn them off at any time as they’re not password protected by you. 

These features include:

• Explicit content filters in DMs
• DM settings, including who can message your child
• Friend request settings, including who can add your child as a friend
• Blocking

Bark also provides help with managing Discord. We’re here to help you keep your kid safe by allowing you to:

• Block Discord entirely, if needed.
• Manage when your child can use Discord throughout the day.
• Monitor group and individual DMs (text chat only) on Android devices.

We’re continually advocating and working for Discord to allow iOS monitoring.

So, should my kid download it?

Probably not until they’re older, around 15 or 16. Discord is wildly popular with gamers, and teens who are mature enough to not go exploring some of the sketchier servers may be okay. What is Discord’s main danger? Inappropriate content for sure — so be careful to keep the lines of communication open if your kid is using it.