Discord will force age verification for all users to maintain full access next month

Discord will soon be expanding teen safety protections worldwide including teen-by-default settings and age assurance designed to create safer experiences for teens.

We’re also launching recruitment for Discord’s first Teen Council, creating a space for teen voices to help shape… pic.twitter.com/CW7G4sO38R

— Discord Support (@discord_support) February 9, 2026

The transition is not optional. Although Discord will use a “inference model” to attempt to guess the age of users based on account age and activity patterns, those that the system cannot catalog – or those who wish to recover blocked functions – must undergo a biometric facial scan using AI or upload an official identification.

If you decide to ignore the verification prompts next month, your Discord experience will change drastically. The platform will apply what it calls “Teen-appropriate experience” by default. This means that regardless of whether you have been on a server for years or are the administrator, you will immediately lose access to any channel marked with age restriction (+18). These spaces will appear “obfuscated” behind a persistent black screen until the validation process is complete.

But the restrictions don’t end with adult content. Unverified users will see their communication capabilities diminished: They will not be able to talk in “Stage” channels (similar to live podcasts), their direct messages with strangers will be filtered to a secondary tray and all images that Discord’s AI considers “sensitive” will be blurred without the possibility of deactivating the filter. It is, in essence, a way of “safe reading” forced for anyone who does not go through the facial scanner.

To obtain adult status, Discord offers two main routes through third-party providers. The first is a facial age estimation, where an AI analyzes a video-selfie to determine the age range.. Although the company assures that this process is done locally and that the images are deleted immediately, skepticism among privacy enthusiasts is high. The second, more intrusive, option requires a photograph of an official identification document compared to a selfie.

The shadow of insecurity hangs over this announcement. Last October, one of Discord’s former verification providers suffered a massive data breach that exposed government IDs of thousands of users. Although Savannah Badalich, global director of product policy at Discord, says that they have changed providers and do not store permanent biometric data, The history of breaches in the industry suggests that the risk of surveillance or identity theft is a factor that users will have to weigh against the convenience of continuing to use the app.

In an attempt to soften the impact, Discord will use device metadata and behavior patterns on servers to try to validate adults without manual intervention. However, this “inference” system is opaque. Although the company clarifies that it does not read private messages for this purpose, The fact that an algorithm decides your access level based on your “aggregate activity” raises questions about how much surveillance is necessary to keep the platform “secure”.

For technology, gaming and privacy enthusiasts, the arrival of March marks a point of no return: accept the scan or accept a limited account.