Zift Advisory
Discord is a free voice and text chat app for gaming groups to communicate during game play. It is free to download in iTunes and Google Play. The Discord app is rated for teens aged 13+ and is best suited for mature teens with parental supervision.
What is Discord - Talk, Chat & Hangout?
Discord is a Voice Over IP (VoIP) chat client, originally designed for gaming groups to communicate and coordinate actions during play.
The developers started Discord to provide gamers with a chat and communications client that was less resource-heavy than contemporary offerings, such as Skype or Teamspeak, while still being simple to set up and use.
The Discord mobile app is fully-featured, as Discord is written on the mostly device-agnostic Electron framework. Mobile app users have full access to voice channels, direct messaging, group chats, and text messaging.
Users can also create and administer Discord chat servers via the app, or join existing servers by entering the invitation code provided by that server's administrators.
- Voice chat with other users via VoIP.
- Share text, video, and images in chat.
- Direct message other users for one-on-one communication.
- Receive push notifications of mentions and direct messages.
- Manage multiple servers and channels.
Discord currently reports over forty-five million users and is available for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux, with the additional option of accessing Discord via a web browser.
Is Discord - Talk, Chat & Hangout safe for my kids?
Discord doesn't have the best reputation for child safety. While Discord can be safe for kids if used carefully, with supervision, it is essentially on the users and site administrators to uphold their own standards of conduct.
There are a number of positive features to Discord that make is safer for kids. Private servers or channels can be restricted to users with a invitation code, and users need to have the username and a four-digit tag number of another user in order to become “friends” on the service.
Unwanted or inappropriate users can be blocked, muting them in chat and preventing them from directly communicating with your child. Discord is also free of in-app advertisements or purchases.
On the other hand, there are several reasons why Discord is not safe for kids and should only be used either by mature teens or supervised children.
Registration is free and effortless, supporting the creation of disposable pseudonyms. This separates users from long-term consequences or bad reputations which can lead some people to speak and act without restraint.
Discord is infamous in some areas of the Internet for not only featuring rampant abuse and hostile behavior in chats, but as a staging ground for coordinating massive acts of group harassment.
Discord users will band together and “raid” other channels or communities, flooding them with deliberately hateful language, pornography, and all manner of threatening or offensive messages.
There are no real consequences for this activity, either. While Discord is flush with funds for its continued development – the developers raised over thirty million in venture capital – there are no moderators and only five customer service staff with the company.
Discord is not safe for kids without adult supervision.
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