"It's Great Because It's Ran By Us": Empowering Teen Volunteer Discord Moderators to Design Healthy and Engaging Youth-Led Online Communities
Jina Yoon, Amy X. Zhang, Joseph Seering
TL;DR
This study addresses the gap in understanding teen-led online communities by empirically examining teen Discord moderators (ages 13–17) and near-peer mentors within the MMC program. Using semi-structured interviews and constructivist grounded theory, the authors reveal that peer-led, youth-for-youth communities foster valuable social, emotional, and technical growth, along with career opportunities, while also presenting burnout, exposure to harm, and offline-support challenges. The MMC and platform partnerships provide critical support and legitimacy, but introduce power dynamics and bias that require careful management. The work contributes actionable recommendations for platform acknowledgment, mentorship structures, and design approaches that prioritize youth expertise, autonomy, and safety, highlighting the potential of youth-led spaces as healthier alternatives to conventional social platforms.
Abstract
Online communities can offer many benefits for youth including peer learning, cultural expression, and skill development. However, most HCI research on youth-focused online communities has centered communities developed by adults for youth rather than by the youth themselves. In this work, we interviewed 11 teenagers (ages 13-17) who moderate online Discord communities created by youth, for youth. Participants were identified by Discord platform staff as leaders of well-moderated servers through an intensive exam and application-based process. We also interviewed 2 young adults who volunteered as mentors of some of our teen participants. We present our findings about the benefits, motivations, and risks of teen-led online communities, as well as the role of external stakeholders of these youth spaces. We contextualize our work within the broader teen online safety landscape to provide recommendations to better support, encourage, and protect teen moderators and their online communities. This empirical work contributes one of the first studies to date with teen Discord moderators and aims to empower safe youth-led online communities.