Discord

Text and voice chat organized into servers. Popular alongside gaming, and largely made up of communities of strangers.

Menu names shift between software versions and between phone makers. If a name here does not match what you see, look for something close by rather than assuming the setting is gone.

1. 1

   Turn on Family Center and link your accounts

   It gives you a weekly picture of who they’re talking to and which servers they’ve joined.

   User Settings → Family Center

   1. Both of you: open User Settings and find the Family Center tab (on mobile, tap your profile icon first).
   2. Turn on Enable Family Center tab.
   3. Your teen opens Family Center and chooses Connect with Guardian to generate a QR code.
   4. Scan that code with the Discord mobile app on your phone.
   5. Your teen accepts the connection.

   You’ll see new friends added, users messaged, servers joined and call durations for the last 7 days, plus a weekly email. You won’t see message content.

   Who holds this: Either of you can change this, and neither of you is told when the other does.

   Already done this?

   If your teen has refused to link, or linked and then disconnected, there is no parental override to fall back on. Discord's words: both parents/guardians and teens must voluntarily opt into connecting. The teen generates the QR code, can disconnect at any time, and re-linking starts from scratch. It ends by itself the month they turn 18. If they will not link, your leverage is at the device level rather than inside Discord.

2. 2

   Set the sensitive content filter

   Direct messages and server messages can contain images your child didn’t ask for.

   User Settings → Privacy & Safety

   1. Open Privacy & Safety.
   2. Set sensitive content in direct messages to Block.
   3. Set sensitive content in servers to Block.

   Recommended by age

   13–15	Block everywhere
   16–17	Block, though Blur is the other half of the only real choice

   Worth knowing, because it is unusually strong for Discord: a teen cannot switch this off. Discord's answer is that teens cannot disable the filters entirely, and the Show option is not offered to them at all. What they can choose is whether sensitive content in direct messages is blurred or blocked. So the decision here is which of those two, not whether to have it.

   Who holds this: Your child cannot loosen this without proving to the platform that they are an adult.

3. 3

   Close down direct messages from strangers

   By default, sharing a server with someone can be enough for them to message your child privately. Closing this down does cut off people they met in a server and genuinely get on with, which is most of how friendships work on Discord, so friend requests from friends of friends is usually the setting that survives contact with a teenager.

   User Settings → Privacy & Safety

   1. Turn off Allow direct messages from server members.
   2. Set who can send friend requests to Friends of Friends, or off entirely.
   3. Turn off Message Requests if you’d rather nothing gets through at all.

   Recommended by age

   13–15	Server DMs off, friend requests from friends of friends onlyOnly people already on their friends list can reach them. Strangers cannot.
   16–17	Server DMs offOnly people already on their friends list can reach them. Strangers cannot.

   Who holds this: This lives in your child's own settings, so they can change it back. There is no parent-side lock for it.

   If someone is being cruel to them

   This handles strangers. It does nothing about a server full of classmates, which is where most of it actually happens. Leaving a server is often faster than any setting, and worth agreeing as an option in advance.

4. 4

   Go through their server list together

   This is the part that matters most and no setting can do it for you. Most risk on Discord comes from which rooms they’re in.

   1. Open their server list and ask about each one: what is it, who’s in it, how did you find it?
   2. Leave any large public server they can’t explain.
   3. Agree that new servers get mentioned to you.
5. 5

   Set a monthly spending cap

   Nitro subscriptions and gifts are easy to rack up.

   Family Center → spending settings

   1. Set a monthly limit on purchases.

   Recommended by age

   13–15	$0 unless agreed
   16–17	A small agreed cap

   Who holds this: This lives in your child's own settings, so they can change it back. There is no parent-side lock for it.

6. 6

   Set screen time limits

   Voice chat sessions run long, especially at night.

   Family Center → Screen Time Limits

   1. Schedule downtime, particularly overnight.

   Who holds this: This lives in your child's own settings, so they can change it back. There is no parent-side lock for it.

Menus move. If something on screen does not match these steps, check the official link above.