The move comes as part of a broader trend among social‑media platforms to tighten age‑verification rules for minors. Discord had originally intended to roll out a policy this year that would have required users whose adult status could not be confirmed by internal tools to submit a facial age estimate or an official ID scan.

In February, the company delayed that plan, citing worries over the collection and handling of personal data. Instead, it will now rely on indirect signals – such as how long an account has existed, the servers a user frequents and overall activity levels – to place accounts into one of two groups.

According to a blog post, Discord will not scan messages or voice calls to infer age, and the assigned age group will not be displayed on a user’s profile or shared with other members. Users can view their group status in the Account Status section of the User Settings menu.

The company estimates that roughly 90 percent of its users will be placed in the correct group automatically, meaning no further action will be required for the majority of the community.

Accounts that fall into an “Unconfirmed” category will be prompted to verify they are over 18. Verification options vary by region and may include credit‑card confirmation, Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Google Wallet, the AgeKey credential service, or more traditional methods such as an ID scan or a video selfie.

To address privacy concerns, Discord says any third‑party age‑assurance vendor must permanently delete a user’s data once verification is complete, and any on‑device facial age estimation will run locally without uploading images to Discord’s servers.

Users classified as Teens will face three restrictions: messages from non‑friends will be routed to a message‑requests inbox with a warning before accepting unknown friend requests; they will be blocked from viewing age‑gated content, including images flagged as sensitive and adult‑only servers, channels or bot commands; and their full profile and activity will be visible only to friends and members of smaller servers.

Those in the Unconfirmed group will initially be subject to the first two teen restrictions until they complete an age‑verification step.