Discord will age-lock your account next month and you'll have to submit an ID or accept a face scan to unlock it – you know, 4 months after suffering a third-party data breach

(Image credit: Sony)

After softer, region-specific rollouts, Discord has now announced global child protection settings that will default all users to an age-locked "teen-by-default" status pending age verification via ID or selfie age estimation. Teen-by-default settings will hit "all new and existing users worldwide" in March 2026, starting with "a phased global rollout."

Discord announced the change today, echoing a rise in age-based online protections purportedly aimed at child safety.

Age estimation runs "video selfies" through an AI that tries to determine how old you are. Discord says these selfies "never leave a user’s device."

ID verification will be handled by third-party vendors. Again, Discord says, "Identity documents submitted to our vendor partners are deleted quickly – in most cases, immediately after age confirmation."

When Discord does add "more options" for age verification, we'll apparently see an "age inference model, 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." Again, this looks to be AI trying its best to see if you're old. It's unclear how, or how reliably, the model will assess users. Should we start posting about lower back pain and taxes, just to be safe?

Badalich acknowledged the risk of users leaving Discord over this change – which, based on the reactions I've seen online, is the safest conclusion to draw from this news. "We do expect that there will be some sort of hit there," she said, "and we are incorporating that into what our planning looks like. We'll find other ways to bring users back."