Naven
Answers
Is there a Discord alternative that is safer for kids?
Discord's structural problem for younger users is public servers full of strangers with direct messaging enabled. Alternatives worth looking at are ones with no public directory and no stranger DMs — Naven is one, and closed platforms like a school's own tool are another.
Discord is not badly built; it is built for a different job. Its public server discovery is the feature that makes it useful for finding a community around a game, and it is the same feature that puts a thirteen-year-old in a room with adults who sought them out. The direct-message default compounds it.
The properties that actually reduce the risk are boring: no browsable directory of people or spaces, no way for a stranger to start a conversation, and screening that happens before a message is delivered rather than after somebody reports it.
Naven has all three. It is also considerably less capable than Discord for large public communities, which is the honest trade — anybody who wants public server discovery should stay on Discord.