It’s easier to count the teens who don’t use Discord, than those that do.
According to The New York Times, Discord was born out of the global chat of “Fates Forever” developed by Jason Citron. Struggling to make his way into the gaming world, Mr. Citron decided to take the global chat feature from his game and make it into a platform for gamers.
Since its creation, Discord exploded into the social world with approximately 6.7 million servers dedicated not only to videogames, but streamers, youtubers, friend groups, and the list goes on. Though created for video games, Discord has become a central part of teenagers’ social lives.
Discord has created a platform of its own by combining group text features of iMessage and WhatsApp, and the voice and video call features of Skype and Zoom. Also giving the ability to share your screen during a voice call, explaining something or showing a video game to your friends has never been easier.
“Because of the servers, it makes interpersonal chat way easier,” Ovs senior Erik Hately said, “There’s just nothing else like it.”
Gamers have taken to the platform because it is not only free, but extremely easy to use. Even just making a username is easier. Instead of having to change your usual username because it’s taken by someone else, a person’s username is followed by a four digit number, specifying the player. This allows the same username to be used by hundreds of different people, while keeping it easy to find your friend and talk to them.
In Discord, players can join servers about specific games or ideas. This creates massive communities that learn from each other about their favorite games. This has led to massive discoveries in terms of game easter eggs, little things that developers add to their games, and exploits, things that the developers did not expect to be possible in their game.
In the past 2 years, the Covid-19 pandemic has made Discord even more popular, going from 56 million users in 2019 to 100 million users in 2020. While the pandemic has kept us at home, Discord has allowed kids to hang out without the risk of getting sick.
This has made Discord a safe space for many students, when asked about his use of Discord, Tristan Witte-Phelps, an Ovs sophomore said, “It makes me feel safe, especially now with covid going around.”
The Discord outbreak has not skipped over the OVS community. There are approximately 6 OVS servers, ranging from Minecraft dedicated servers to small chat rooms for friend groups.
In the OVS boys dorm, OVS sophomores Elie Rosten and Max Kwon attest to the intense usage of Discord.
“Me and Max live in rooms right next to each other but do most of our hanging out at night on Discord,” said Eli.