In brief
- Age checks will only apply to age-restricted servers and certain safety settings, Discord said.
- Discord says its “teen-by-default” rollout is not driven by ongoing ID requirement regulations.
- Privacy advocates say the change still asks users to trust the company’s claims about how their data is handled.
Discord attempted to reassure users on Tuesday about its plans to implement age-verification technology, saying most will not need to scan their faces or upload government IDs.
Under its new age-assurance system, expected in March, users will only be required to verify when accessing 18+ servers and channels, or when attempting to modify certain safety settings.
“As part of our ongoing commitment to teen safety and wellbeing, we decided to evolve how the platform helps keep users safer by introducing teen-by-default, a teen-appropriate default experience for all new and existing users worldwide,” Savannah Badalich, the Global Head of Product Policy at Discord, told Decrypt.
In a Tuesday post on X, the official Discord account said the “vast majority” of users can continue using the platform without ever being asked to confirm their age.
“We use age prediction to determine, with high confidence, when a user is an adult,” it wrote. “This allows many adults to access age-appropriate features without completing an explicit age check.”
The move follows online backlash and users seeking alternatives, with some reports estimating a surge of more than 10,000% in online searches in February compared to the month prior.
Discord said most adult users will be assigned to an age group using internal age-prediction models based on account signals.
Only when those systems cannot determine adulthood with high confidence will users be asked to complete additional verification through third-party partners.
When verification is required, Discord said facial age estimation runs entirely on a user’s device and is not transmitted to the company or its vendors. Government IDs are used only to confirm age and are deleted afterward. Discord said it receives only a user’s age and does not associate identity documents with user accounts.
Age verification on social media is gaining global momentum.
Earlier this month, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov called out Spanish regulators on X, saying such measures were “pushing dangerous new regulations” that threaten internet freedoms.
Those sentiments were echoed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in January, which said 2025 was the year “age verification went from a fringe policy experiment to a sweeping reality across the U.S.”
In December, Australia’s Labor government banned the use of social media for under-16s, citing concerns over child safety. That initiative has largely failed, with teens reporting measures to easily circumvent age-restricted controls.
Discord’s Badalich said a specific legal requirement had no bearing on the timing of the policy change.
“This was a part of our proactive, ongoing commitment to teen safety and wellbeing,” she said. “The global teen-by-default experience is not driven by any single regulation.”
Privacy advocacy groups, however, say those assurances ask users to trust the company without a way to verify the claims independently.
“They’re asking folks to trust,” Suzanne Bernstein, counsel at the non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center, told Decrypt. “Many companies already have all this information, so there’s sometimes a false choice in terms of what information we have control over, our privacy.
Bernstein said the issue goes beyond Discord and reflects broader limits on user control online.
“This shows that often, as consumers, we don’t have a lot of agency over our own information if we want to engage online, which all of us do or have to do in some scenarios,” she said.
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