Safer for Teens, Same Discord for Adults

Policy & SafetyStanislav VishnevskiySeptember 22, 2026TLDRMore than 90% of you won’t be asked to confirm your age. Since our last post about teen safety, we've had to launch age assurance solutions in more places, including Texas and Brazil. Laws requiring age assurance are expanding around the world. Rather than waiting to be told how to do it, we’re launching our own privacy-preserving approach: one that reflects your feedback.You can check your age group status at User Settings > Account Status. We've estimated your age group automatically from account signals like how long your account has existed or the kinds of servers you're a part of. We don’t look at your messages, calls, or other content. We're launching this over the course of this week, so it may take a few days to reach your account.If you're in the adult age group (18+), nothing changes. If you're in the teen age group (13-17), you can keep messaging friends, joining voice calls, and participating in non-age-restricted servers, but with additional safety protections that block age-restricted content, spaces, and settings. Otherwise, Discord works the same. More on this below.We've added several new ways to confirm your age, including some that don't require an ID or selfie (including credit cards). If you're an adult but weren't automatically placed in the adult age group, you can confirm your age group at any time by going to User Settings > Account Status. More on the new options below.In February, after listening to your feedback, I shared that we were delaying our announced plans for global age assurance. I promised we'd come back in the second half of the year with a more transparent, clearer path forward, with less friction. Here's where we landed.Age assurance draws strong opinions and skepticism, especially when it involves sharing biometric information or a form of ID. At the same time, age assurance laws are expanding, and since my last post we've had to launch age assurance in other regions, including in Brazil and in Texas. We're hearing from policymakers in countless states and countries who want stronger teen protections, from the European Union to Indonesia. To me, that makes it more important than ever to show that this can be done in a privacy-preserving way: one where more than 90% of you won’t have to confirm your age.That's why, starting tomorrow, we'll automatically place you in an age group using account signals, like how long your account has existed and the kinds of servers you're part of. We use multiple account signals to determine age groups at an accuracy level matching what’s possible with biometrics. No single server determines your age group, and we don't look at your messages, calls, or other content to decide which age group you’re in.If you just want to know your age group: Go to User Settings > Account Status. We're launching this over the course of this week, so it may take a few days to reach your account. If you don't see anything yet, check back later. Your age group isn't shown on your profile or visible to other members in a server. Here's what each age group status means:Adult Age Group: You're in the adult age group (18+), so nothing changes for you.Teen Age Group: You're in the teen age group (13-17), so you have additional protections. Content and settings meant for adults aren't available. Otherwise, Discord works the same. Learn more here.Unconfirmed: This is for cases where we don't have enough signal yet to place you in an age group, so some content and settings meant for adults aren't available until you confirm you're an adult. New accounts remain unconfirmed until we have enough information to determine an age group for them. You can continue to use Discord without taking any action, but if you want access to age-restricted content, spaces, and settings, you can confirm your age group in User Settings > Account Status.If you're an adult but you weren't automatically placed in the adult age group, you can fix it by confirming your age group in User Settings > Account Status.Here's more on what we did since February and how age assurance works.What I said we'd do before expandingThe goal hasn't changed: build in more protections for teens, while keeping the experience unchanged for adults. We don’t want or need to know more information about you aside from your age group, and for most of you we can determine that based on basic signals like account age.In February, I set conditions we'd meet before expanding. Here's each one and where it stands:More age assurance options. In February, the only methods we’d planned for to confirm your age were facial age estimation or an ID scan. Based on your feedback, we committed to giving you more options that meet our high privacy standards. So we added alternatives, including some that don't require a video selfie or an ID. We've vetted every method, and the data you provide to us and our vendors is only ever used to determine your age group, so you can pick whichever option you're most comfortable with. Depending on factors such as your region or device, you may see some or all of the following options:Credit Cards. You input your card information, and k-ID routes the details to Stripe to confirm the card is owned and authorized by an adult. Neither k-ID nor Discord ever sees the card details. Stripe saves the last 4 digits of card numbers after the check because of their legal obligation as a payment processor. A small temporary charge may be placed to confirm the card is valid, which is then refunded within 14 business days.Apple App Store. Allow Apple to share your age range with us to help determine whether you're an adult or teen. Your exact birthdate won't be shared, only your age group.Google Play Store. Allow Google Play to share your age range with us to help determine whether you're an adult or teen. Your exact birthdate won't be shared, only your age group.Google Wallet. Confirms your age using the ID pass already set up in Google Wallet, based on your passport. Your ID details stay with Google. (Currently Google Wallet only support passports from Brazil, Singapore, Taiwan, the UK, and the United States.)AgeKey. A reusable age credential you set up once and can use across various services, so you don't have to reconfirm on multiple platforms.Vendor transparency. We committed to publicly documenting every third-party age assurance vendor and make it clear who each vendor is and what their practices are, including what data they handle and how long they keep it. We've done this, and you can see it here. As a condition of working with us, we require every vendor to only store what you submit for as long as it takes to confirm your age, and to permanently delete it immediately after. We also set a hard requirement: any partner offering facial age estimation must run it entirely on your device, so your biometric data never leaves your phone. k-ID meets that bar, and we won't work with any vendor that doesn't.A technical blog explaining how our age estimation model works. We said we'd publish the methodology behind our age group estimations, including the signal categories we use and the privacy protections built into the model. Today, we're publishing that technical blog alongside this announcement, so you can evaluate the approach for yourselves. You can read it here.Age assurance data in our transparency reports. We said we'd report how many people were asked to confirm their age group, what methods they used, and how often our automated systems handled it without requiring a user to manually confirm their age group. In May, we published the first age assurance data in Discord's 2026 Transparency Report, which includes data from the UK and Australia launches. You can find it here. We'll keep expanding this reporting over time.A dedicated spoiler channel option. We know many communities use age-restricted channels not for adult content, but for conversations people want to have on their own terms, like talking about spoilers, politics, or heavier topics. Earlier this year, we introduced spoiler channels so communities can mark content as a spoiler without age-gating an entire server. More on that here.How we determine your age groupWe believe meeting age requirements shouldn’t require ID checks or selfies for everyone. We'd prefer to give you more choices, including less intrusive options that don't require biometrics or sensitive personal data. That’s why we built an age estimation model based on account signals to determine your age group. Because of it, more than 90% of you will not be asked to confirm your age.Our age group estimation model looks at patterns of account behavior on Discord. It does not look at your messages, calls, or other content. For example, the way a typical teen uses Discord will look different in aggregate from how a typical 30-year-old uses Discord. Our model has learned these patterns and uses them to estimate whether a given account most likely belongs to an adult (18+) or a teen (13-17).Specifically, the age group estimation model looks at factors such as:The communities, servers, and games you're connected toGeneral activity levels, such as how many channels or servers you're active inAccount history, such as how old your account isNo single server, community, or friend decides your age group. Our age group estimation model learns from patterns across accounts, working the same way as the safety systems we've run for years to catch coordinated abuse.Doing this without compromising your privacy matters to us. As part of our commitment, we published a technical blog post that explains how the model works, including the privacy protections we built into it. You can read more here.No model is perfect, and ours is going to make mistakes, though we believe our model performs as accurately as other available methods. Our model works by looking at patterns to create an age group estimation, not a certainty, so some accounts