March 15, 2024

Teen and Child Safety Policy Explainer

Child Sexualization

Content that sexualizes children has no place on Discord or in society. We don't tolerate any kind of text or media — real or generated — on our platform that portrays children in a sexual manner. This type of content causes serious harm to victims.

We consider Off-Platform Behaviors when reviewing content under this policy due to the high-harm nature of the offense.

We report illegal child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and grooming to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Users who post this content are permanently banned from Discord.

You may not post or share the following types of content, such as: [sensitive language content warning]

Inappropriate Sexual Conduct with Teens and Grooming

Discord has a zero-tolerance policy towards individuals who engage in sexual grooming, extortion (sometimes referred to as “sextortion”), or the sexual exploitation of minors. Users who engage in this behavior will be permanently removed from Discord on a first offense. We consider anyone under the age of 18 to be a minor and anyone 18 or over to be an adult.

Given the high-harm nature of this content, we will also consider off-platform evidence as explained in our Off-Platform Behaviors Policy when reviewing content under this policy.

You may not engage in the following types of behavior, such as: [sensitive language content warning]

Teen Self-Endangerment

We take the safety of our younger users seriously and don't allow children under the age of 13 to have a Discord account. We want our teen users to be able to express themselves freely on Discord while also taking steps to ensure these users don’t engage in risky behaviors that might endanger their safety and wellbeing.

We also don’t allow servers that encourage or facilitate dating between teens, even if run by teens themselves. These types of spaces can make our teen communities targets for others who may want to exploit them and can inadvertently facilitate other violations of this policy.

While we understand that teens may want to help each other stay safe online, we cannot allow users or communities to put themselves in potential harm’s way. This means that we will take action against users or servers that we reasonably believe are trying to “bait” or entrap others into inappropriate interactions with teenage users.

We want teens to be safe on Discord, but we also don’t want to penalize them for expressing themselves or exploring their identities. We expect that some users might violate this policy without realizing it, so we provide warnings to teen users where possible. However, for their own safety, we permanently remove a user’s account from the platform if we see consistent violations of this policy or if the user appears to be in immediate risk of harm.

If you are under the age of 18, you may not engage in the following types of behavior, such as: [sensitive language content warning]

How to Avoid Violating These Policies

  • Do not post about sexualizing, grooming, or abusing children — even as a joke
  • Do not send or ask for sexual content from anyone under the age of 18 — even if you are also under 18
  • If you are an adult and run a server that allows sexual content, make sure that you mark any channel that contains sexually explicit content with an “age gate
  • If you are not sure whether a piece of content might violate these policies, don’t post it

Please leave servers dedicated to any of the violative content described above. Discord may also take action against accounts that are present in violative servers.

How to Report Violations of These Policies

Reporting safety violations is critically important to keeping you and the broader Discord community safe. All Discord users can report policy violations right in the app by following the instructions here. For more information on these policies, please reference our Community Guidelines #6, #7, and #8.

Resources

If your sensitive photos have been shared or published online, the following resources can help:

  • Take It Down (NCMEC) is a service that you can use to help remove online nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit photos and videos taken before you were 18
  • NoFiltr has resources to help you protect yourself online and support you in these situations. You can also text NOFILTR to 741741 for immediate assistance

If you or someone else is in danger we encourage you to consider contacting law enforcement right away and letting them know what's going on, regardless of the information you're able to provide.

If you or a friend needs mental health support, we encourage you to use the following resources:

If you’re outside of the United States:

  • A list of worldwide crisis hotlines can be found here

If you’re in the United States:

  • Crisis Text Line is a nonprofit that provides 24/7 text-based volunteer support for people in crisis, by texting DISCORD to 741741
  • The Lifeline number (1-800-273-8255) is available 24/7 for emotional support

Although we're not affiliated with staff at any of these hotlines, they're trained to help and guide callers with ways to address things that are bothering them.

Tags:
User Safety

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