Social platform Discord, the popular meeting point for game players of all ages, has announced plans to roll out age verification worldwide. From March, the platform will have a ‘teen-appropriate experience’ by default, as it currently does in Australia and the UK, and require players to confirm their ages before they’re able to fully access all social features.
The decision follows a concerted push by global governments – including the Australian and UK governments – to protect young people online by requiring age checks on all social media and adjacent platforms.
Discord’s new requirements – quick links
Discord announces ‘enhanced teen safety features’
In a media release, Discord confirmed it was aiming to enhance its teen safety features to ‘reinforce its long-standing commitment to creating a safer and more inclusive experience for users over the age of 13’.
From March, users ‘may be required to engage in an age-verification process to change certain settings or access sensitive content’. The checks – which include a face scan for facial age estimation, the submission of identity documents or background verification by tools – will be required for any age-restricted channels, servers, commands or select message requests.
Without these checks, users will be marked as a teen by default, and will not be able to access any teen-restricted features.
‘Rolling out teen-by-default settings globally builds on Discord’s existing safety architecture, giving teens strong protections while allowing verified adults flexibility,’ said Discord’s Head of Product Policy, Savannah Badalich.
‘We design our products with teen safety principles at the core and will continue working with safety experts, policymakers and Discord users to support meaningful, long term wellbeing for teens on the platform.’
Notably, Discord will soon implement a background ‘age inference model’ which is ‘a new system that runs in the background to help determine whether an account belongs to an adult, without always requiring users to verify their age.’ While some users will be asked to directly verify their age, it appears this model will be able to automatically assign an age group.
This has sparked some concern about the data stored by Discord, and how private information and documents will be used going forward – even despite assurances that Discord will delete data immediately and that it does not keep any information provided.
Privacy concerns mount after major data leak in November 2025
Concerns have been heightened by a recent personal information data leak at Discord, which reportedly saw around 70,000 people impacted – the majority of whom were Australians verifying their ID as part of a soon-to-be-introduced, mandatory social media age verification policy.
Per reporting by Information Age, the breach came via a third-party customer service provider used to vet failed verification. The major incursion allowed hackers to steal information including government ID images, names, email addresses and some billing details.
While the company has learned lessons from this incident – Badalich told The Verge it ‘immediately stopped doing any sort of age verification flows’ with this third-party company – concerns remain about safety and assurance, with many Discord users taking to social media to push back on this newly-announced policy.
It’s worth noting the subject of submitting IDs is particularly prickly in regions like the US, as various reports have alleged big tech companies including Google have been working alongside immigration enforcement agencies to provide private information to authorities.
Per Discord, the global age verification rollout is simply an extension of the ‘successful’ teen-by-default experience already delivered in Australia and the UK, building on that approach to deliver ‘consistent, age-appropriate protections worldwide’.
We’ll likely hear much more about the implementation process in the coming weeks.
