discord’s family center update now lets parents monitor weekly purchases

Discord Enhances Family Center with Expanded Teen Monitoring Tools

Recent updates to Discord’s Family Center provide guardians with greater visibility into their teenagers’ platform activity. These enhancements include insights into spending habits, key interactions, and overall time allocation.

The primary objective of these changes is to assist parents in overseeing their teen’s Discord usage, specifically identifying potential issues related to excessive time spent or financial expenditures.

Initial Launch and Subsequent Expansion

Discord initially introduced Family Center in 2023. It featured an activity dashboard detailing the servers a teen had joined, alongside a weekly email summary for guardians outlining their teen’s platform engagement.

Now, Discord is broadening the scope of these monitoring capabilities to offer a more comprehensive overview.

Detailed Purchase Tracking

Guardians are now able to view a complete record of all purchases made by their teen within the preceding week. This encompasses both items acquired from the Discord Shop and subscriptions to Nitro, Discord’s premium service.

Usage Time and Interaction Reports

The platform now also reports the total duration of voice and video calls conducted by the teen through direct messages, group chats, and servers over the past seven days.

Furthermore, Discord will showcase the five most frequently interacted-with users and servers during the last week.

New Parental Control Settings

Discord is introducing new parental control options accessible exclusively to guardians. These settings allow control over who can initiate direct messages with the teen.

Guardians can also configure content filtering to manage exposure to potentially sensitive material.

Data Privacy Management

Expanded data privacy controls are now available, enabling guardians to determine how Discord utilizes their teen’s data. This includes managing personalized advertising preferences.

Reporting and Notification Options

When a teen submits a content report, they now have the option to simultaneously notify their parents or guardians about the action taken.

However, Discord maintains a policy of not disclosing the specifics of the reported content, encouraging direct communication between teens and their guardians.

Commitment to Teen Safety

“These new features empower guardians with linked Family Center accounts to actively contribute to a safer online environment for teens, all while respecting their privacy,” Discord stated in an official blog post.

Industry-Wide Focus on Teen Protection

This update aligns with a broader trend within the tech industry, as companies like Meta, YouTube, and OpenAI have recently implemented updates to enhance teen safety measures.

Organizations such as OpenAI and Character.AI have also been refining their AI-driven products to ensure a safer experience for younger users.