Content notice regarding discussions of grooming, sexual exploitation, coercion and suicide.
Discord announced a suite of new tools and features to keep teens safe in its Family Center, which launched in 2023 and is primarily aimed at caregivers. The news comes as the company faces multiple lawsuits against teenagers who were allegedly groomed and sexually exploited on the platform, as well as Roblox.
IN blog post The company said the update is designed to help caregivers stay informed and take a more active role in their teens' online experiences, while also giving teens autonomy in shaping their “digital environment.”
These features, which will be rolled out next week, will allow caregivers to better monitor weekly activity, including all purchases made, total minutes spent on voice and video calls, and the top five users and servers that the teen texted and called most often in the past week.
Additionally, if your teen posts a report on Discord about another user or piece of content, they will have the option to notify their guardian. If they do so, the guardian will receive a notification email, but it will not contain the details of the report. Likewise, while guardians can now filter who can send private messages to their teen and whether sensitive content is filtered, the exact content of conversations is not revealed.
New teen safety tools are being rolled out amid lawsuits alleging that Discord is unsafe for underage users.
The blog post includes bullet points aimed at both teens and caregivers, with the former noting that “your voice matters” and that “privacy is protected.” For caregivers, Discord advises them to “take a more active role in providing safety,” “build trust,” and “start communicating better” with teens. “We want to make it easier for you to lead rather than monitor,” the ad says.
Back in April Roblox Corporation and Discord sued on allegations that each company facilitated the sexual abuse and exploitation of minors in both countries. Roblox and Discord. The lawsuit was filed in California on behalf of a minor plaintiff named “Jane Doe” against both platforms for allegedly allowing the accused sexual predator to stalk and exploit Doe during interactions on each.
The accused allegedly targeted the teenager through two games within Roblox ecosystem by sending her messages through the “whisper” feature, even though her Roblox account “clearly showed” that she was underage. Over time, the plaintiff was persuaded to share her Discord username with the accused predator, which led to conversations on the popular chat platform where she was then forced to send sexually explicit images. These events took place over a period of six months.
At the time, Discord declined to comment directly on the case in a message sent through a representative. “Discord cares deeply about the safety of our users, and we take strong action when we detect violations of our policies, including removing content, banning users, shutting down servers, and collaborating with law enforcement,” the company said in a statement.
In September via NBC NewsThe mother of a 15-year-old California boy who committed suicide has sued Roblox and Discord over his death, claiming her son was groomed and coerced into sending explicit images to the apps.
The lawsuit was filed by Rebekah Dallas in San Francisco County Superior Court, accusing the companies of “recklessly and deceptively conducting their business in a manner that resulted in the sexual exploitation and suicide” of Ethan Dallas. The son started playing Roblox at the age of 9 years with parental consent and with parental supervision. Alleged attack by an “adult sexual predator” who posed as a child in Roblox began when he was 12 years old, Rebecca Dalas' lawyers said in a statement to NBC at the time.
According to the lawyers, the conversations “gradually escalated into sexual topics and explicit conversations,” and the son was allegedly asked to turn off parental controls and move the conversations to Discord. On Discord, the man “increasingly demanded explicit photos and videos” and threatened his son that he would post or share the images. The son complied out of fear, the complaint says.
The lawsuit accuses Roblox and Discord of wrongful death, fraudulent concealment and misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation and strict liability. He argues that if Roblox and Discord had taken steps to verify users before allowing them to sign up for apps, or implemented age and identity verification and other security measures, the above events would not have occurred.
As for Discord specifically, the lawsuit says the platform is “filled with sexually explicit images and videos featuring children, including anime and child sexual abuse material.”
A spokesperson told NBC that the platform is “deeply committed to security” and would not comment on legal matters. “We require all users to be at least 13 years old to use our platform. We use a combination of advanced technology and trained security teams to proactively find and remove content that violates our policies,” the spokesperson said. “We maintain robust systems to prevent the spread of sexual exploitation and grooming on our platform, and work with other technology companies and safety organizations to improve online safety on the Internet.”
While the new features and moderation tools are helpful on paper, Discord explains that communication between teens and caregivers is a key element throughout the announcement. But as is evident from regulations such as the UK's Online Safety Act, people will always try to bypass verification systems. Less than 24 hours after the law took effect in July, PCGamer reported that some people managed to bypass Discord verification by using Sam Porter Bridges' face in Death in Stranding 2 in photo mode.
