Discord & Snapchat: Lock Down Contact Settings

The National Crime Agency has said the online environment, in its current form, is not safe for children. Its figures show that reports about harm on Snapchat and Discord arrive every day, and many involve strangers making contact with young people. The good news is that most of the risk comes through two doors: who can message your child, and who can find them. You can close both in one sitting.

What the NCA figures show

The NCA’s head, Graeme Biggar, gave daily report numbers by platform. Snapchat generates about 100 reports a day, Instagram about 75, Discord about 50 and Roblox about 25. These come from a total of 92,000 reports over the past year.

A report is not proof that a child has been harmed on that app, and the numbers do not mean one platform is more dangerous than another. They do show where contact is happening. Strangers most often reach children through direct messages, friend requests and ‘add’ features, so that is where to start.

Discord: lock down direct messages and servers

Discord is organised around servers, which are group chats on topics such as games or hobbies. Many are safe. The risk comes when a stranger can message your child privately after meeting them in a public server.

1. Open Discord on your child’s device and tap User Settings (the cog icon).
2. Go to Privacy & Safety.
3. Under Safe Direct Messaging, choose the strictest option, usually labelled Keep me safe. This scans direct messages for explicit content and blocks it.
4. Under Who can send you friend requests, turn off Everyone. Leave on only Friends of friends or Server members, or better still, switch everything off until your child has a friend list you recognise.
5. Still in Privacy & Safety, switch on Allow direct messages from server members only if you are happy with that. Otherwise, turn it off.