What age should a kid get Discord?
Discord's own minimum is 13, and on this plan it lands at 13 as well — but for a different reason, and the reason is the part worth having. Discord is usually asked for because of one game and one group of friends, and what it actually installs is three separate permissions plus a room run by someone you have never met.
The short answer
13 on this plan, because Discord needs group chats, and group chats are the last thing to open. Discord's terms also say 13, which is a data-privacy line rather than a readiness one — the two numbers agreeing here is a coincidence, not a confirmation.
Discord is three permissions at once
The app name is the wrong unit to decide with. An app arrives with the latest thing it needs, and Discord needs three things a family might feel quite differently about.
| What Discord needs | On this plan |
|---|---|
| Games with chat and other players Multiplayer games including in-game chat and voice. | 12 |
| Texting anyone who has your number Messages from people outside the approved list. | 12 |
| Group chats Messaging with more than one other person at a time. | 13 |
Unlike Roblox or Minecraft, there is no smaller version of this. A Discord with the chat turned off is not Discord; chat is the entire product. That is why this page has no "with chat off" row and the games pages do.
A server is not a group chat, and that is the actual decision
Most parents picture Discord as a messaging app: a friend list, some conversations. What a child mostly uses is servers — rooms with their own channels, their own rules and their own moderators, run by whoever created them. A big public server can have tens of thousands of people in it.
People get added, removed, screenshotted and talked about. The social injuries parents worry about mostly happen in groups, and they happen faster than any parent can watch.
That is true of a class group of thirty. A server multiplies it and adds a second thing: the moderators are strangers. They can see what is posted, they set what is allowed, and they decide who stays. Some run their rooms carefully. There is no way to tell from the invite link which kind you are joining.
So the useful question is not "can my child have Discord". It is "which servers, and who runs them" — and that is a conversation, not a setting.
The age checks that arrived in September 2026
Discord began rolling out age assurance to all users on 23 September 2026, after delaying the plan in February following a backlash about biometric scans and ID checks. It is new enough that almost every parenting guide to Discord online still describes the platform without it.
Most people are not asked for anything. Discord says more than 90% of users will not have to verify. Instead it estimates an age group — adult, teen, or unconfirmed — from account signals like how long the account has existed, device and activity data and usage patterns. Discord says it does not estimate age from message content, profile data or demographic attributes.
What a teen account gets. Accounts in the teen group are automatically blocked from age-restricted servers and channels. Message requests from people who are not friends go to a separate requests inbox. And the child gets an alert when accepting a friend request from someone they share no mutual friends with — which is, quietly, the most useful of the three, because that is what a stranger looks like.
If the guess is wrong, an account can be moved without a face scan or an ID: a credit card check, or the age group already held by the Apple App Store or Google Play account, are both accepted.
The part to read twice
In 2025 a third-party vendor working with Discord was breached, potentially exposing the data of about 70,000 users — including government ID photos and selfies that had been submitted for identity verification.
This is not a reason to avoid Discord, and it is not unique to Discord: it is what happens when age verification becomes normal across the internet. It is a reason to be deliberate about one specific thing.
If a platform asks your child to prove their age, prefer the method that does not hand over a face or a passport. A credit card check or an app store age signal settles the same question and leaves nothing behind that can leak.
It is also worth telling a child, in plain words, why you are choosing the boring option. "We don't send photos of documents to companies we can't see" is a rule they can carry to the next platform, and there will be a next platform.
Is Discord 13+ or 17+?
This one comes up constantly, and the answer changed. Discord's terms of service set the minimum at 13 in the US, and Apple's App Store now lists Discord at 13+ as well, under the age ratings Apple revised in 2025. The 17+ that people remember is the old rating.
One consequence of the 13 is worth knowing before it happens to you: if an account is reported as belonging to someone under 13, Discord locks it until the user can verify their age with official identification. A child who typed a fake birth year at nine can find the account frozen at eleven, with the only way back being exactly the document you did not want to send.
Which is the practical argument for not lying about the birth year, and a better one than "because it's the rule".
Australia: Discord is not covered by the under-16 law
Since 10 December 2025, age-restricted social media platforms in Australia must take reasonable steps to stop under-16s holding accounts, and parental consent creates no exception. Discord is not one of them: the regulator's published lists place it among the services considered not age-restricted, alongside Messenger, Pinterest, Roblox, Steam, WhatsApp and YouTube Kids. The restricted list is Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X and YouTube.
If they already have it
Discord usually arrives sideways — a game needed it, or the whole friend group moved there in a week. Taking it away is the most expensive opening move available and rarely the one that holds. The reset plan goes in a better order: two weeks in which nothing changes, then settings, then the conversations that were skipped, then one dated decision.
For Discord specifically, the evening's work is: check which age group the account is in (User Settings, then Account Status), go through the server list together and ask who runs each one, and turn off direct messages from people who are not friends.
Put a date on it
Whatever you decide, the thing that makes it hold is that it is written and dated. A child cannot tell "not yet" from "never" unless somebody writes down which one it is.
Free and printable. Your child's name and birthday stay in your browser and are not saved anywhere.
Questions parents ask
Should my 10 year old get Discord?
Ten is below Discord's own minimum of 13, so the honest answer is no — an account at ten exists only by giving a false birth year, and that is the thing that gets accounts frozen later. On this plan Discord arrives at 13 too, because it needs group chats. If the request is really about one game, the better answer is usually to solve it inside the game rather than by adding a platform: most games have their own voice chat, and it comes with far fewer rooms full of strangers attached.
Is it illegal to join Discord under 13?
No — it is a breach of Discord's terms, not a law the child has broken. The 13 comes from US privacy law that puts obligations on companies collecting data from under-13s, which is why almost every platform lands on the same number. The practical consequence is not legal but administrative: an account reported as under 13 is locked until the user verifies their age with official identification.
Is Discord 13+ or 17+?
13+. Discord's terms set 13 in the US, and Apple's App Store also lists it at 13+ under the ratings Apple revised in 2025. The 17+ figure people remember is the old App Store rating and is out of date.
Does my child have to scan their face to use Discord?
Usually not. Discord says more than 90% of users are sorted into an age group automatically, from account signals rather than from a scan. If the guess is wrong, the account can be corrected with a credit card check or the age group already held by the Apple App Store or Google Play account — neither of which involves a face or a document. Given that a vendor holding this kind of data was breached in 2025, the non-biometric route is the one worth choosing.
Sources
The ages on this page are Rungs' own plan — a suggestion a family can move, not a finding. Where the page states a checkable fact, it is sourced here. Discord's own blog and support pages could not be opened from here, so the facts below come from reporting, from the App Store listing and from the Australian regulator.
- TechCrunch — Discord's age-verification era is upon us, despite community backlash (22 September 2026)That the rollout to all users began on 23 September 2026 after a delay in February; that Discord says more than 90% of users will not have to verify; that age group (adult, teen or unconfirmed) is estimated from account tenure, device and activity data and usage patterns, and not from message content, profile data or demographic attributes; that teen accounts are blocked from age-restricted servers and channels, that message requests from non-friends go to a separate inbox and that teens are alerted when accepting friend requests from someone with no mutual friends; that a wrong guess can be appealed with a credit card or app store age data; and that in 2025 a third-party vendor working with Discord was breached, potentially exposing about 70,000 users' data including government ID photos and selfies.
- ESRB — What Parents Need to Know About DiscordThat Discord's terms of service allow only users aged 13 or older to use the service in the US, and that an account reported as belonging to someone under 13 is locked until the user verifies their age with official identification.
- Apple App Store — Discord listingThat the App Store age rating for Discord is 13+.
- eSafety Commissioner — Which social media platforms are age-restricted? (lists published 21 November 2025, assessment reconfirmed March 2026)That Discord, along with GitHub, Google Classroom, LEGO Play, Messenger, Pinterest, Roblox, Steam and Steam Chat, WhatsApp and YouTube Kids, was considered not an age-restricted social media platform, and that the services considered age-restricted were Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X and YouTube.
- OAIC — Social media minimum age (Australia)That age-restricted platforms must take reasonable steps to prevent under-16s from having accounts from 10 December 2025, and that parental consent does not create an exception.
- FTC — Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA)That the under-13 line is an obligation on operators collecting children's data, which is where platforms' own minimum age of 13 comes from.
Pages opened and checked on 29 September 2026. Discord's age assurance was changing in the weeks around that date; if you are reading this much later, check the current state before relying on the September detail. How sources are handled on this site: about.