What is Discord? Information for Parents

Hey Parents! Have you heard about Discord yet? Well if you haven't, that's okay -- we're going to break it down for you.

What is Discord? Discord is a FREE text, voice, and video chat application. There are over 300 million users on Discord today! How does Discord work? Discord was originally intended for gamers, but has grown to become a platform for creating communities through private chats, or “servers.” Servers allow users to communicate with each other through text, voice or video chat. Users can create servers, be invited to servers, or find links to servers online to access them. What's needed to use Discord?

• A computer, smartphone, or gaming console to download the app ‘Discord’

• An email address to create a Discord Account

• You must be at least 13 years of age or older to sign up for a Discord Account
  

Why use Discord? Discord is a great way to discover communities and connect with other people with shared interests. This may be from playing games, but it can also be any other interest; playing a particular instrument, reading comics, a favorite sports team, etc. With Discord, you can use text, voice, and video features to stay in touch with all your friends and family -- for free!

Is Discord safe? With more users joining Discord everyday, there are public and private communities (servers) for all sorts of topics, ideas, and interests. As a user, you decide which communities and discord servers you want to join (or create!) and what types of content you want to see. With the right privacy settings, additional measures can be taken to limit types of friend requests and contact from strangers as well. However, there is always an inherent risk when it comes to using the internet and parents should be mindful of the interactions our children have online!

How do I keep my children safe on Discord? Parents can review their children's 'Privacy & Safety' settings from within their account. To do this, navigate to User Settings > Privacy & Safety. From here you can control who can contact your child and set filters to prevent explicit media content from being sent to your child. See below screenshot for reference.