Discord is one of the most commonly used platforms for chatting, especially for teenagers. Is Discord safe for kids to use?

In 2023, NBC News collected about 200 different cases of grooming, kidnapping, and online sexual exploitation of children directly involving Discord. The true scale of abuse is far greater, given that the majority of cases are never formally discovered and prosecuted. This makes it increasingly urgent to understand this platform and its risks. 

Discord is an online chat platform with the capability to break out into sub-communities and conversation threads, known as channels or servers. Discord allows live streaming within these channels, and many of them are voice-chat enabled. 

Discord is used for a wide variety of purposes, from classroom projects to professional communities. However, it is perhaps best known as a place for gamers to hang out, often on live voice chat while they play. 

The way that Discord separates out niches and allows them to connect has been part of its growth in popularity. The platform’s use skyrocketed during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Discord is predicted to hit 656 million users in 2025. Although it’s hard to have exact numbers due to Discord’s lax age verification process, at least a fifth of Discord’s users are under the age of 24. 

According to NBC, “Discord’s young user base, decentralized structure and multimedia communication tools, along with its recent growth in popularity, have made it a particularly attractive location for people looking to exploit children.”

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) logged a 474% increase in grooming cases on Discord from 2021 to 2022. That rate has continued to climb in the last few years.

Age verification measures are shaky at best, and in general, children can freely circulate in servers with adults. Discord has been famously slow to respond to reports of inappropriate material, and at times blasé or obstinately uncooperative with law enforcement. Their unwillingness to work with appropriate emergency hotlines has caused NGOs like InHope to deem it too ethically unsound to work with them. Discord itself is fairly open about the reality that they do not attempt to moderate the majority of the messages that get sent on their platform, despite paying lip service to safety. 

How do predators use Discord for grooming?

Predators use Discord in similar ways to other apps frequented by groomers. Often, it begins with showers of compliments intended to make a child feel special. Then it might escalate into the adult asking for sexually explicit material or personally identifying information, such as a sobering case where a 13-year-old girl sent a predator her home address. 

Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the many ways predators have been documented grooming children on Discord:

• Requesting sexually explicit photos and making frequent sexual comments
• Committing sextortion, where a predator threatens to publicly reveal explicit photos unless the victim sends them a sum of money
• Demanding that a child harm themselves while livestreaming
• Demanding that a child harm others (family members or pets)
• Asking that their victim move to a private platform off the main server
• Asking a kid to perform tasks on adjacent platforms like Roblox to gain clout or “Robux”
• Sending expensive gifts
• Initiating in-person meetings
• Stalking
• Forcibly exposing a child to pornography
• Isolating a child from friends and family
• Threatening retribution if a child tells others about the relationship

Who is most likely to be targeted by predators on Discord?

Most often, predators target those who they perceive to be vulnerable in some way: kids who already struggle with their mental health, members of the LGBTQ+ community, those with an unstable family situation, or anyone who is particularly desperate for love and acceptance. Even that very natural human desire is seen as exploitable.

One survivor of horrific abuse on Discord told Vice: “[The victims] do not have the typical life. There’s a lot of them that have been abused, either physically or sexually. There’s a high rate of sexually abused girls in there.”

Some groups of pedophiles and predators have actually distributed “how-to” guides for grooming kids. Those guides encourage abusers to seek out kids with low self-esteem, with eating disorders, who self-harm, and who have little family support. When youth in these situations are targeted and abused, it compounds their existing struggles, making them particularly vulnerable to suicide. 

What are the warning signs of abuse on Discord?

Because predatory interactions on Discord are hidden away behind screens, it can be hard to identify when they’re happening. Most of the time, the best way to identify that abuse is happening is simply to maintain open and honest lines of communication with someone who is at risk.

Although there is no absolutely certain way to know that someone is experiencing exploitation on Discord, any of these warning signs could be cause for concern:

• A sudden change in behavior, such as becoming more withdrawn
• Being secretive/protective about what is on their screen
• Isolating in their room
• Spending more time chatting with online friends than with friends face-to-face
• Disrupted sleep schedule
• Consistent sudden requests for money with vague explanations for its use
• Introduction of harmful behaviors like self-harm or substance abuse 
• Defensiveness or fear when asked about online activities

Of course, some of these behaviors are a common part of adolescence and do not indicate that grooming is happening. But if you see several of these signs together, it’s wise to gather as much information as possible about what is happening in a kid’s digital world.

“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.”
— Discord’s Child Safety Policy

Discord’s stated policies take a strong stance against any child sexual abuse material or grooming behaviors. Their Safety Center includes information on how to report or block accounts, how to collect information for law enforcement, and how to filter certain content so that it shows up as blurred or obscured. 

Discord itself claims to be proactive in identifying and removing predatory accounts. They self-report that the number of accounts they remove has been steadily increasing, with 116,000 dangerous profiles taken down just in the final quarter of 2023. 

However, as we shared earlier, parents have often complained that Discord was slow to respond when they reported harmful behavior, and hesitant when turning over evidence to police. These actions have led to lawsuits against Discord. Discord also requires very little in the way of identity or age verification, which leaves the platform wide open for people who should not be there.

This means that banned users can easily just create a new account. The same can happen with banned channels. This is how incredibly dangerous groups like 764 proliferate and persist (content note: details on the linked story are incredibly graphic).

It’s commendable that Discord has increased its moderation efforts. However, as the multitude of horror stories of child grooming confirms, those efforts are far from enough. 

The best way to use Discord safely is to use it collaboratively.

Discord is almost an unavoidable fixture in youth culture. In fact, schools use it extensively. If it’s here to stay for now, and if security measures are insufficient to make Discord safe for kids, then communities have to work together to guard against abuse.

The first and most crucial step in that process is for parents, educators, leaders, and caregivers to build strong, trusting, non-judgmental relationships with the kids in their lives. The isolation of being groomed and abused can be intense. Simply knowing they have someone to turn to can end a child’s exploitation before it escalates.

That system of transparency makes it possible to ask kids to share who they’re talking to on Discord and what kinds of things they are discussing. Trust allows adults and kids to work together on setting up privacy settings and reviewing how to use the report feature.

Another way to use Discord safely is simply to build a life that is full of a variety of activities and ways to connect with communities. If a kid is in a gaming subreddit, encourage them to find friends at school, church, or extracurricular activities who play the same games. If your child shares art via Discord, consider finding in-person art groups for them to participate in. Affirm their offline interests. Take what they love about Discord and complement it with face-to-face counterparts.

All imagery in this post was generated using MidJourney AI.