Minecraft is a video game that has been around since 2010, and it’s perfect for players of all ages. Minecraft encourages creativity, problem-solving, and teamwork and explores your sense of adventure. It can also be a great resource for kids. Luckily for parents, there are lots of ways to use the game, and there are many resources available to help kids play safely.
What Is Minecraft?
Minecraft, a sandbox game, is where players create (and sometimes destroy) various types of blocks in a 3D procedurally generated world. Players explore, gather resources, craft items, and attack enemies. Swedish game developer, Markus Persson, created Minecraft, which Mojang later developed as well as published by. As of August 2017, Minecraft has sold more than 140 million copies across all platforms.
Is There an Age Restriction?
Although Minecraft has a strict age limit of 13+, many parents are allowing their kids to play the game. The game has a basic level of violence, but players can customize the game by disabling all violence, which limits the visual depictions of violence. Rather than removing violence from the game, parents that want their children to play the game without violence can do so by purchasing the game in a “family-friendly” edition.
Why Is Minecraft So Popular with Kids?
While there are plenty of reasons, one of the most obvious is that Minecraft is an incredibly social game that kids can play with their friends. Kids also like the way Minecraft lets them explore and build worlds of their own design. Players can even build entire cities, towns, and villages, complete with their own shops, restaurants, and houses.
Here Is the Parent Guide to Minecraft
- Check the games’ age rating your children play and be sure they only play age-appropriate games. However, while gaming can be educational, it’s important to remember your child’s age, as the games they play can be rated accordingly. Children under the age of 3 cannot play certain games.
- Encourage children about playing fairly and treating gamers with utmost respect. Video games are exciting, and most kids love them. But gaming can also become a problem if the kid doesn’t learn how to interact properly with other people. Video games can be a great way for kids to interact with other kids, and it is also a great outlet for them to express themselves. However, like everything else, gaming needs to be taught.
- Set the family safety to protect children from looking into games that might not be content- or age-appropriate. When our children are playing games, we don’t always know how age-appropriate they are. While you hope that games like Fortnite and Minecraft are at least somewhat family-friendly, sometimes that may not be the case. While games are typically safe for children to play on their own, children often discover games that may not be age/content appropriate. To help protect your children from playing games that may not be as safe or age-appropriate as they should be, you can use family safety settings in Google Play. You can also set up Google Family Library to let family members manage their accounts.
- Setting gametime limits with your children. When you are a parent, you only have so much time to play with your children. That much is true, but what can you do to balance the time demands of family commitments with time spent playing with your kids? The simple answer is to set a limit. Everyone can agree that life is complicated enough without having to add balancing your family schedules to it already. Too much time can be spent on gaming, and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) suggests that parents limit screen time to no more than two hours a day for children under age 8.
Minecraft is a massively multiplayer online game that seems to appeal to almost everyone. It’s packed full of creative possibilities and is endlessly fun with friends. But parents should know that there are some dangers associated with the free game, and parents who download it for children should be sure to monitor the time they spend playing.
Video games started out as a way to pass the time, and they’ve been doing just that for generations. But there have been some downsides to video games, like playing too many hours on the console or playing them so much that kids forget to go outside and play. While playing video games is a fun way to pass the time, it’s important to keep some safety in mind, as well.
