Discord is a place where friends, family, and communities come together to make connections and hangout. Every day, people on Discord build communities and discuss all sorts of topics, play both casual and competitive games, and sometimes even learn something new!
For a more in depth look into how Discord works, please check out our article on a Beginner’s Guide to Discord.
We are dedicated to making Discord a safe space for all. Family Center is a tool we’ve built to help parents and guardians stay informed and involved in your teen’s Discord experience while respecting their privacy and autonomy. View an Activity Feed, get weekly email summaries, and manage select safety and privacy settings to support your teen’s safety goals. These tools may help encourage regular conversations between teens and their families so they can work together to build positive online behaviors.
For additional resources on how to better shape your Discord experience, please check out our Parent Hub.
What this article covers:
How to set up Family Center
Desktop/Browser
To connect your account with your teen, you’ll first need to have the Discord app installed on your mobile device. While you can get started with and access Family Center through Discord on browser, you can only complete the connection process with your teen by using the Discord mobile app. After installing the app or opening Discord, tap on Family Center in User Settings and toggle the Enable Family Center tab under Settings.
Enable Family Center tab
To connect to your teen in Family Center, your teen needs to provide you with the generated QR code that is located in their Family Center tab under the Connect with Guardian option. Scan the QR code with your Discord app and after your teen accepts the connection, you’ll both have full access to Family Center!
Reveal QR Code button
Once connected, you can head into Family Center by tapping on My Family to see any connected teens there.
If you’d like to learn more about Family Center for teens, you can check out this article.
Mobile
1. If you have the Discord app installed on your mobile device, you can head into your User Settings by pressing your profile icon.
Avatar in the right-hand corner
2. After navigating to your User Settings, select the Family Center tab. Once you’re in Family Center, press My Family to scan your teen’s QR code located in their Family Center tab under the Connect with Teen option.
Example of sending a connection request to a teen
How to use Family Center
Your Teen’s Recent Activity
Once you’ve connected to your teen’s account, you’ll be able to see the following information for the last 7 days by heading to User Settings > Family Center and tapping on the Activity tab:
- New Friends: Your teen's recently added friends, including the display names and avatars of those friends
- Users Messaged & Called: Users your teen has messaged or called in Direct or Group messages, including their display names and avatars.
- Total Call Minutes in Voice & Video: Your teen's total call minutes, including voice and video calls in Direct Messages, Group Messages, and Voice Channels (these support voice and video communication) in servers
- Top Users and Servers: Teens’ top five users and servers in the last week, in order of message and call frequency
- New Servers: Servers your teen joined or created, including server names, server icons, and server member counts
- Active Servers: Servers where your teen joined a Voice Channel (these support voice and video communication) or sent a message
- Total Purchases: Your teen's purchases (total amount spent), including Shop purchases and Nitro subscriptions. Nitro subscriptions are shown in the week when they are billed to your teen’s account.
In addition to seeing information about your teen’s recent activity through Family Center, you’ll also receive weekly updates containing a high level summary of their activity via the email address you provided at sign-up.
Your teen’s activity summary
Teen Account Settings
You will also be able to see and adjust some of your teen’s settings, including:
- Sensitive content filters: Adjust if the content flagged by our sensitive media filters are blurred, blocked, or shown by default to your teen. Note: For UK, and Australian and Brazilian teens, your guardian can only choose between blur and block due to regional restrictions.
- Friend Requests: Adjust who can send your teen a friend request (Everyone, friends of friends, Server members)
- Server Direct Messages: Adjust if server members can send your teen Direct Messages
- Message Requests: Adjust if your teen has message requests turned on. Message requests is on by default for teen users. When it’s on, messages from users who aren’t friends with your teen are filtered into a separate “Message Requests” folder. This helps keep unwanted messages out of your teen’s main direct message inbox.
Important: Guardians and parents in regions with regional restrictions must be age assured adults (18+) and will be required to complete age assurance before updating their teen's message request setting.. Please refer to the article below that corresponds to your region for further details.
Content, Social permissions, and Friend requests settings in Family Center
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Data & Privacy Settings: This includes a suite of data & privacy settings, like allowing users to use their data to improve Discord or personalize their Discord experience.
- Use data to improve Discord
- Use teen’s Discord activity to personalize Sponsored Content
- Use third-party data to personalize Sponsored Content
- Use data to personalize my Discord experience
Data & Privacy settings in Family Center
Your Teen’s Submitted Reports
When your teen reports another user or content to Discord, they can choose to let you know they filed a report. If they choose to share this with you, you’ll get an email notification. This option is only available for linked accounts.
Reports can be about many different things—from spam messages to more serious concerns. When your teen chooses to notify you about a report, it shows they want you to be aware and involved. This is a good opportunity to have a supportive conversation with them. Consider asking how they're doing, or letting them know you're proud of them for speaking up, and reminding them that you're always there if they need help or want to talk about anything they experience online.
The specific details of the report won't be shared in the email, so checking in directly with your teen will help you understand what happened and how you can best support them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why can I only see the last 7 days of activity?
A: Our goal is to surface information that is timely, not overwhelming, and helpful in starting conversations about online safety. Family Center highlights information in a 7 day period in order to provide contextually relevant information for parents and guardians.
Q: Discord thinks my teen is 25 but they are actually 13. How can I update their age?
A: When a user signs up for Discord, we ask for their age to assure that they meet the minimum age requirement in their country. It sounds like your teen may have made an error when inputting their date of birth. To correct this, please have your teen contact Discord at dis.gd/request > Update My Age Information. Be sure to have them include their actual age in their request.
Q: How can I flag inappropriate activity to Discord?
A: As a parent, we encourage you to spend some time reviewing and discussing your teen’s settings so that you can customize their Discord experience and avoid unwanted experiences. You can learn more about Discord’s safety settings here.
Additionally, if your teen encounters a violation of our Community Guidelines please have them submit an in-app report of the behavior by following the instructions here.
In sensitive situations, if you would like to report the behavior on your teen's behalf, you can do so by following the instructions here.
Q: My teen won't allow me to connect with them through Family Center, how can I make them?
A: Both parents/guardians and teens must voluntarily opt into connecting to Family Center. If your teen has additional questions about information shared via Family Center they can learn more here. We encourage you to talk with your teen to customize a Discord experience that is right for the whole family.
Q: Why can't I link to my teen’s account?
A: If a user has their age set to 18 or older, you will not be able to link to their account. Your teen will have to correct their age on Discord before you are able to link to the account.
To do this, please have your teen contact Discord at dis.gd/request > Update My Age Information. Be sure to have them include their actual age in their request.
Please note that Discord has minimum age requirements depending on the country your teen is in. In most countries, the minimum age to use Discord is 13. You can review Discord’s minimum age requirements by country here.
Q: How can I join a server my teen is in?
A: Every server on Discord is different and each has their own custom join settings and rules around invites to fit the needs of the community.
To learn more about a server your teen is a part of, we encourage you to discuss and review the server together.
Q: Why can't I see all of my teens' friends?
A: Family Center is designed to provide parents with their teens' recent activity. At this time we only provide information about their activity on Discord within the last seven days. This includes the number of users they’ve messaged or called, the number of new friends they’ve added, and how many servers they’re actively participating in. Family Center won’t contain a complete archive of activity and will only highlight activity occurring after your teen has accepted your connection request.
Q: Can I make changes to my teen's friend list or joined servers?
A: Family Center does not allow any connected parent to make modifications or changes to their teen’s friend list or joined servers on their teen’s behalf. For security and privacy reasons, only account owners can make modifications on their account.
As a parent/guardian, we encourage you to leverage Family Center as a way to spend some time reviewing and discussing your teen’s settings so that you can help customize their Discord experience. We’ve outlined some discussion starters and tips for helping keep your teen safe on Discord here: https://discord.com/safety/360044153831-helping-your-teen-stay-safe-on-discord
Q: How many teens can I connect to in Family Center?
A: Parents and guardians are able to connect to a maximum of 8 accounts.
Q: I don't want my teen talking to this user, can I do anything?
A: If you feel uncomfortable with someone your teen is engaging with, we encourage you to talk to your teen about your concerns. We want to make you aware of the tools available to your teen on Discord, such as our sensitive content filters and spam filters. You can also block specific users who you or your teen do not wish to communicate with anymore. Instructions on how to do so can be found here.
Discord takes our teen users' security and safety very seriously. If you believe there is a violation of our Community Guidelines, we ask that you report this behavior to us. You can find more information on how to submit a request here.
Q: If I accidentally remove my teen’s connection, do they need to re-allow me to connect?
A: Yes. For security and privacy reasons, once a parent has disconnected from a teen, they must go through the connection process again in order to re-establish their connection with that teen.
Q: Can I see if another user is connected to my teen in Family Center?
A: Yes, connected parents and guardians can see every account their teen has connected to in Family Center. An email confirmation with the newly linked account will be sent to the email address associated with the parent/guardian Discord account.
Q: Are there recommended safety settings that I should set for my teen?
A: We know that every teen is different, so while we stand by our safety features and default settings for teens, we encourage guardians and teens to actively review these settings together to make sure they are serving the positive Discord experience they want to have.
Q: Will my teen be able to adjust their own safety settings without me? Will my teen be notified when I adjust their safety settings?
A: Teens will not be able to adjust their safety settings unless it’s through your account in Family Center. Teens will not be notified when you adjust their settings, so we recommend chatting through the options with them.