An update on how we confirm your age group on Discord

TLDR

• More 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 expanding

The 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 group

We 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 to
• General activity levels, such as how many channels or servers you're active in
• Account history, such as how old your account is

No 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 may end up in the wrong age group. We’ll keep learning and continue working to improve the model over time, even as the misses inevitably make their way into memes and social posts.

Note: The age estimation model is not currently available for Discord users in the UK and Australia. Please check this directory to learn more about how this works in your region.

If you're a teen on Discord, here's what this means for you

If the way you use Discord is hanging out, gaming, and chatting with friends in DMs and servers, that stays the same. That's the core of what Discord is for, and it's the same whether you're a teen or an adult. But there are some important differences based on your age group.

Regardless of your age group (teen or adult), you can talk to all of your friends normally no matter what their exact age is. However, teen accounts come with protections around three themes:

1. Who can reach you: Messages from non-friends go to your message requests inbox so you can review them first. Turning this off requires confirming you're an adult. You'll also get an alert before accepting a friend request from someone you don't share mutual friends or a small server with. This won’t impact people you already talk to. It only changes how messages and requests from people you don't know are handled.
2. What you can and can’t see: Sensitive images identified by our sensitive content filters are blurred or blocked depending on where they appear. Age-restricted servers, channels, and age-restricted bot commands aren't accessible. Changing any of this requires confirming you're an adult.
3. What others can see about you: Your full profile details and activity, like what game you're playing, are visible only to friends and people in smaller servers you're part of. You can adjust this at any time.

Some of these are defaults you can change yourself without confirming your age group. Others can only be changed if you are in the adult age group. The full list is here.

If your age group is unconfirmed, you get the same protections except your full profile details and activity are visible to friends and people in all servers you’re part of (details here). This can also be adjusted at any time. Some settings also vary by region. Find specific settings for your region here.

One last thing, personally

I grew up on the early internet. It's where I found people who were into the same things I was, even when no one around me shared those interests, and that changed the direction of my life. It's a big part of why I built Discord. The internet has changed since then, and we don't live in a perfect world, which is why our goal is the same one I wrote about in February: more protections for teens, while keeping the existing experience intact for everyone else. My hope is that our approach shows we can preserve what makes Discord special while taking seriously the responsibility that comes with it.

Any form of age assurance, and the possibility of sharing something biometric or an ID, is a controversial topic. Rightfully so, because of what it represents and where internet legislation around the world is heading: toward a more gated internet. This is bigger than us.

We've chosen to launch our stronger protections for teens everywhere using the most privacy-preserving approach we could build, including where it isn't yet required by law, because we believe it's the right thing to do. By launching a global approach with non-biometric options, we're getting ahead of laws that might ask us to implement something less privacy-focused. The decisions policymakers make now will shape how platforms advance both teen safety and privacy for years to come, and I encourage people to make their perspectives heard where they live.

Previously, I said trust is earned through actions, not posts. This launch is where you hold us to that. We'll get some things wrong, but you can judge us on how we respond: how accurate the age group estimation gets, how fast we fix bad calls, and whether we keep publishing the data so you don't have to take my word for it. That's how we earn your trust.

Stan

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Discord launching and why?

Age assurance laws are expanding around the world, and we’ve had to launch age assurance in more places. Rather than waiting to be told how to do it, we built a privacy-preserving approach based on user feedback.

Starting today, a