Discord is one of the largest and most popular community-focused social platforms around, and although it was created with gamers in mind, it has evolved into a space for education, creativity, and general socializing.
By some estimates, approximately 28% of all teens use Discord in some capacity, and Discord has now taken a new step to protect those users from what it deems to be harmful or inappropriate content.
Announced February 9, 2026, Discord users of all ages and nationalities are about to be hit with a new "Teen-by-Default" setting when the phased rollout begins in early March.
What this move does is effectively lock all users, new and existing, into what Discord calls a "teen appropriate experience" consisting of "updated communication settings, restricted access to age-gated spaces, and content filtering that preserves the privacy and meaningful connections that define Discord."
If you'd like to remove yourself from the teen lockdown, you'll have to prove your age, no matter how long you've been using your Discord account. Failing to do so will result in certain age-restricted channels, content, and messages from appearing.
We design our products with teen safety principles at the core and will continue working with safety experts, policymakers, and Discord users to support meaningful, long term wellbeing for teens on the platform.
Savannah Badalich, Head of Discord Product Policy
I personally hate the idea of handing over sensitive documents to a company, especially one that has been affected by a major data breach that exposed the personal data of some 70,000 Discord users. I'm not alone in that sentiment, and the VPN usage spike in the UK when age verification laws were implemented is proof.
Nevertheless, Discord highlights some key privacy protections related to the global age verification rollout. If you choose to provide a video selfie, the data is said to "never leave a user's device." If you decide to provide government ID to Discord's vendor partners, the data is "deleted quickly."
Discord says that multiple forms of verification may be required. Worse, it also says it has a new "age inference model" that is always running in the background, analyzing your account for patterns belonging to an adult user to help prevent unnecessary manual age checks.
The fervor around age verification ramped up last year when UK and Australian laws forced the likes of Xbox, Discord, Reddit, and many more to begin scanning government-issued IDs, faces, and even credit checks for proof of age.
This global rollout is the next step in Discord's age verification process, which it believes will create "meaningful, long term wellbeing for teens on the platform," according to Discord's Head of Product Policy at Discord, Savannag Badalich.
Speaking with The Verge, Badalich says the company expects to see some users quit Discord entirely due to the new global age verification standard, noting that "we'll find other ways to bring users back." On the subject of last year's data breach, Badalich claims Discord stopped using the third-party vendor and has cleaned up what data it keeps.
Do you think age verification methods for apps like Discord are necessary? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments section!
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