Teen Vigilance: Navigating Risky Social Interactions on Discord

TL;DR

This study explores how teenagers use vigilance and community strategies on Discord to navigate complex safety risks, highlighting their agency in managing risky social interactions.

Contribution

It provides new insights into teenagers' risk navigation strategies and community governance on Discord, informing safer online platform designs.

Findings

Teenagers evaluate suspicious interactions before forming friendships.

They use safety tools and controlled risk-taking to protect privacy.

Community participation and vigilant governance mitigate risks.

Abstract

Teenagers are avid users of Discord, a fast growing platform for synchronous communication where they often interact with strangers. Because Discord combines private DMs, semi-private voice channels, and public servers in one place, it creates a hybrid environment that can produce complex and underexplored safety risks for teenagers. Drawing on 16 interviews with teenage Discord users, this study examines their strategies for navigating risky social interactions in the platform. Our findings reveal that when teenagers encounter risks during social interactions, they exercise vigilance by evaluating suspicious interactions before forming friendships, using safety tools, and engaging in controlled risk-taking to safeguard their privacy and security. At the community level, they mitigate risks through selective participation in servers, a practice supported by vigilant governance structures. We discuss how vigilance enables teenagers to act during risky encounters to protect themselves, advancing understanding of teenagers' agency in risk navigation and informing teen-centered designs for safer online environments.