Discord’s Family Center update now lets parents monitor weekly purchases

Discord is taking steps to strengthen parental control with its latest update to the Family Center, offering guardians deeper insights into their teenagers' activity on the platform. This update allows parents to monitor their teens' spending habits, including total purchases made over the past week, as well as the time spent on voice and video calls in direct messages, group chats, and various servers. Initially launched in 2023, the Family Center provided an activity dashboard that showcased the servers teens joined and included a weekly summary email for parents. The recent enhancements expand these monitoring capabilities, enabling guardians to view the most interacted-with users and servers in the last seven days. In addition to monitoring purchases and interactions, Discord is introducing new parental control features. These settings can only be modified by guardians, allowing them to manage who can send direct messages to their teens and to filter out sensitive content. Furthermore, guardians can oversee data privacy controls for their teens, determining how Discord may use their data, including the option to show personalized advertisements. A notable addition allows teens to notify their parents or guardians when they report content on the platform. However, Discord clarified that it will not reveal the specifics of the reported content, encouraging open discussions between teens and their guardians instead. In a blog post, Discord emphasized that these new features empower guardians linked to Family Center accounts to actively foster a safer online environment for their teens while also respecting their privacy. This update follows a trend among various social media platforms, including Meta, YouTube, and OpenAI, which have recently implemented enhancements to improve safety measures for younger users.