So I was helping him with his laptop and saw Discord open. Started asking questions and turns out half his friend group has been on there for months. Some of these servers look pretty sketchy. I'm not a tech boomer but I'm genuinely worried. Do any of you let your kids on Discord? What rules do you have?
This happened with my crew too. I ended up asking him to show me around Discord and see what his friends are into. Turns out it was mostly gaming talk, which I can live with. Taking interest in it made him way more open to discussing safety stuff.
Same boat here. My concern was less about Discord existing and more about making sure he knew not to share personal info or chat with randoms. Had that one talk and we've been good since. Better he's somewhere his actual friends are than hiding it anyway.
Yeah man, the Discord thing snuck up on me too with my oldest. I'd say just have a calm conversation about it, maybe set some ground rules about who he's talking to and what servers he's on. My kid actually appreciated that I didn't flip out.
Yeah this is tricky. Discord is so common now that we basically have to accept it at some point with that age. We sat down with our 12yo and established some ground rules about who he's talking to and what servers he's in. The key is staying involved without being creepy about it.
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Finding stuff like this is always the hard part. The knee-jerk reaction is panic but honestly Discord itself isn't bad if you know what he's doing on it. Gaming communities? Totally fine. Random friend groups? Might want to chat about that.
My oldest has had Discord for a year now and we check in about it occasionally. I'd ask him what servers he's in and who he's talking to. Most kids that age are just using it for gaming communities which is pretty harmless.