Your time online can impact your wellbeing, shaping how you connect, communicate, and experience community.
On Discord, that experience is defined by the moments people share, what happens in conversations, how people show up for each other, and the systems behind it. Building healthier experiences on Discord means giving people clearer guidance and a shared understanding of how we approach wellbeing.
Our partners at Boston Children’s Hospital’s Digital Wellness Lab define wellbeing as a combination of physical, mental, emotional, and social health factors that contribute to overall quality of life. That definition resonates with us because it captures how closely wellbeing can be tied to the spaces where people spend their time.
The communities people build here, from gaming sessions with friends to fandom servers, study groups, and esports competitions, are a real and meaningful part of how people connect and build relationships. As a result, how people feel in these spaces, and whether they feel seen and supported contributes to their digital wellbeing.
That’s the vision we’re building toward, the guiding force behind what shapes our work, and what today’s updates are designed to support.
Today, we’re sharing two things we’ve been working on to support healthier online experiences that represent a shift in how we think about user wellbeing online:
- The Discord Player’s Guide
- Discord’s Wellbeing Principles
We want people on Discord to feel comfortable, confident, and able to be themselves. And we know that what shapes people’s experiences online is their understanding of what’s happening around them, how they communicate, how they make decisions in real time, and how they show up for others.
That’s why we’re investing in the Discord Player’s Guide to help people build the awareness and skills to make informed decisions and navigate complex situations thoughtfully.
Introducing the Discord Player’s Guide
For years, Discord Community Resources was the go-to guide for volunteer community moderators that was built by the community, for the community. It was full of wisdom about running servers, handling conflict, and keeping spaces healthy. Though we loved what it was, it was focused on one community role.
We stepped back and asked a broader question. What would it look like to take that idea further? Not just for volunteer community moderators, but for everyone.
The Discord Player’s Guide is our answer.
It’s a growing library of educational modules, resources, and practical guidance designed to help people navigate online spaces with more confidence and clarity. It is for everyone: from teens and parents, to volunteer community moderators and anyone else who wants to better understand how to communicate, make decisions, and show up online.
The goal is not to tell people what to think or how to behave. It’s to give them the tools to understand what is happening and respond thoughtfully.
We are launching with our first module, Communicating with Empathy Online, developed in partnership with Crisis Text Line. This module focuses on how empathy shows up across digital communication and how to support others in ways that are thoughtful, not reactive.
We’re also launching with two separate tipsheets: How to Protect Your Account from Scams and What to Expect When Reaching Out to Crisis Text Line and publishing our first of three resources in partnership with ECPAT as announced last month, What to Do When Online Banter Goes Too Far.
Additional modules are already in development and will roll out throughout this year, with continued expansion over time. These will cover areas like volunteer community moderator wellbeing, digital literacy, scams and fraud awareness, AI literacy, and healthy communication.
We are building these resources alongside partners including the Christchurch Call Foundation and GamerSafer because helping people thrive online is not something one platform can do alone.
The Discord Player’s Guide is free, open to everyone, and designed to keep growing.
The Wellbeing Principles Behind It All
Alongside the Discord Player’s Guide, we are publishing our Wellbeing Principles to make our approach to user wellbeing more transparent.
These principles guide how we think about product design, policy development, partnerships, and community support.
- Gaming fosters meaningful connection - We believe that gaming and online communities foster transferable life skills and meaningful social connections.
- Championing user agency & transparency - We value our users’ privacy, safety, and autonomy, and recognize that, in addition to coming from different cultural backgrounds, users may have varying developmental needs.
- Centering mental health & digital wellness - We recognize that mental health support, digital literacy and digital wellness are important to navigating digital spaces.
- Wellbeing by design - We work toward solutions that deliver meaningful safety improvements and preserve what makes Discord the best place to play games and hang out with friends.
These are not abstract ideas. They are meant to show up in what we build and how we make decisions.
The Discord Player’s Guide is the embodiment of these principles.
Why Skills Matter
This work reflects a broader view of what it takes to create healthier online experiences.
Moderation, from managing harmful behavior and reviewing content to enforcement actions like removals and bans, will always be central to how we help people have safer experiences on Discord, alongside policies like our Community Guidelines.
Wellbeing starts with helping people build real digital skills and supporting the kind of awareness, confidence, and judgment that shape how they show up online.
The Discord Player’s Guide is designed to do that in a practical and accessible way, and the Wellbeing Principles are there to show how we think and guide the work we do.
When people — at any age — have better skills and awareness, they're better equipped to make the most of their time online. The Discord Player's Guide is one part of how we support that.
Because when people feel more confident, more informed, and more in control, Discord is better for everyone.
