2
Implications of Mobile Applications
Summary
Discord is a social media and mobile youth culture application that forms an easy way to
talk over text, video, and voice. Stan and Jason developed it in 2015. People around the globe
cherished the app because it made it easier to genuinely chat with friends and stay in touch
through discord communities. Within the first three months of its introduction, Discord had
gained more than 3 million users. In 2016, Discord had roughly 25 million users; by 2017, the
number grew to above 90 million, with about 1.5 million new downloads per week (Kiene, Jiang,
& Hill, 2019). Today, Discord is widely used everywhere, including in art communities, study
groups, school clubs, and hiking clubs. In 2022, Discord will have more than 150 million
monthly users, 19 million daily activities, and about 4 billion daily active minutes. It is rated 4.5
stars on Google out of 4.48 million reviews (Arifianto & Izzudin, 2021). It has more than 100
million downloads on PlayStore. Countries where discord is particularly popular include USA
(30.3%), Canada (5.3%), UK (4.4%), Germany (4.0%), and France (3.4%). Discord observed
that although its servers are mainly targeted for game-related interactions, the bulk of non-
gaming activities such as fantasy football, stock trading, cryptocurrency, and other interest
groups was growing.
However, the app has been criticized for cyberbullying on some occasions. The app has
faced problems with abusive chats and hostile behaviour. Such activities include controversial
issues related to politics, race, religion, and ethnicity. The app has also been a host to extremist
users because of pseudonymity provided by Discord. In 2017, CEO Jason Citron briefed that
Discord was aware of the presence of extremist groups and would take action without exposing
their names. It is stated that it has issues with the sexual exploitation of minors and young teens
