Helping your teen stay safe on Discord

Explicit media content settings

From this menu, users can decide what kind of content they’re comfortable with seeing. You can access this setting by going into User Settings and selecting Privacy & Safety and Safe Direct Messaging.

For users under 18, we recommend choosing the “Keep me safe” setting. This setting is on by default and will ensure that images and videos in all direct messages are scanned by Discord and explicit content is blocked.

Direct message (DM) settings

• This menu lets users determine who can contact them in a DM. You can access this setting by going into User Settings and selecting Privacy & Safety and Server Privacy Default.
• By default, whenever your teen is in a server with someone else, they can send them a DM. You can choose to block DMs from users in a server who aren’t on your teen’s friends list. 
• To do so, you can toggle “Allow direct messages from server members.” This will only affect new servers your teen joins. You will need to adjust the DM settings individually for each server that they have previously joined (in Server Settings on the server’s dropdown list).

For any public server your teen is a member of, we recommend choosing to block DMs from users who aren’t on your teen’s friends list. 

Friend request settings

• This menu lets you determine who can add your teen as a friend on Discord. You can access this setting by going into User Settings and selecting Privacy & Safety and Who Can Add You As A Friend.
• Users should only accept friend requests from users that you know and trust. If your teen isn’t sure, there’s no harm in rejecting the friend request. They can always add them later if it’s a mistake.

You can choose from the following options when deciding who can add you as a friend. 

• Everyone - Selecting this means that anyone who knows your Discord Tag or is in a mutual server with you can send you a friend request. This is handy if you don’t share servers with someone that introduced you to Discord and you want to let them friend you with just your Discord Tag.
• Friends of Friends - Selecting this means that for anyone to send you a friend request, they must have at least one mutual friend with you. You can view this in their user profile by clicking the Mutual Friends tab next to the Mutual Servers tab. This is the option we recommend for teens to limit who can interact with them on Discord. 
• Server Members - Selecting this means users who share a server with you can send you a friend request. Deselecting this means that you can only be added by someone with a mutual friend.

You can also control these settings on a server-by-server basis. Maybe you don’t want your teenager to be messaged by everyone in a large community dedicated around a board game that they play, but want to let anyone in their study group message them. You can do this by turning off the ability for the larger board game community members to message you at all.

If you don’t want your teen to be open to ANY requests, you can deselect all three options. However, your teen can still send out requests to other people.

Blocking

If someone is bothering your teen, you always have the option to block the user. Blocking on Discord removes the user from your Friends List, prevents them from messaging your teen directly, and hides their messages in any shared servers.

To block someone, they can simply click on their @username and select Block. 

If your teen has blocked a user but they create a new account to try and contact them, please report the user to the Trust & Safety team. You can learn more about how to do this at this link.

Deleting an account

As long as you have the username and password for an account, you can delete your teen’s Discord account at any time. If you can’t access the Discord account directly but do have access to your teen’s email address, you can email support@discord.com from that email and request the account’s deletion.