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I speak with parents frequently about Minecraft. Some parents love it: it provides a creative outlet and keeps their kid out of trouble. Other parents hate it: it is an addictive waste of time, violent, and their kids always want to buy the Minecraft books at the book fair.

As a former classroom teacher, my feelings for many years fell primarily in the second camp. I hadn’t ever played it, and kids would go to the book fair, buy these books, and ALWAYS want to "read" them during reading time. It drove me crazy! I needed Minecraft explained to me! I know from speaking with parents that many kids who were addicted to “reading” the books had never even played the game! Back then, there was definitely a social pressure to like Minecraft.

Over time my opinion of Minecraft has changed dramatically. First off, I was bored on a Friday night and sat down to play the game for a few hours. I was immediately sucked into survival mode with the challenge of surviving the night. Once I had survived the night, the challenges kept mounting. How do I eat? How do I eat cooked food? How do I farm? How do I make a bed so I don’t have to stay up all night? How do I find iron for better tools? How do I explore a dungeon without dying? What is redstone?

There are still many questions I haven’t answered, and even though I have played Minecraft a decent amount, kids in our classes still poke fun at me and how I play. I am slow, and I don’t understand nearly as much as they do. It takes a long time to learn all there is to learn in Minecraft. It is a truly endless game.

By taking a closer look, we’ll be able to explain Minecraft to you so that you have a basic understanding of the game.

Aside from concerns about screen time in general, Minecraft provides with a great creative outlet and an opportunity to build interesting structures to their heart's content. It's an equivalent to LEGOs without having to buy and store all of those bricks! In that sense it's significantly better bang for your buck and kids can and should learn some important computer skills, like using a mouse and typing, as well as coding and basic server functions.

Minecraft also teaches a lot of coding and problem solving skills. At Coder Kids, we are always encouraging kids to look up solutions to their own problems, primarily on Google. When I am playing Minecraft, my phone is right with me so that I can look up questions any time I have them. I guess people in the early days of Minecraft herded sheep through trial and error, but I am glad that there is an answer out there about how to do it (it is wheat in case you’re wondering).

Also, consider the memorization skills that kids are building during their Minecraft play. Most kids these days may not be memorizing the Gettysburg address, but they can absolutely tell you how to create a diamond sword on their crafting table. I'm not a child development expert, but to me the process of memorization and recall is an important skill that Minecraft teaches very effectively.

Admittedly, I'm not a Minecraft expert, and I interact with kids who have a lot more hours of playtime than I do. In order to really have Minecraft explained, you’re probably gonna have to try it out (just a little bit!) That said, let me conclude with a few tips for parents from my perspective about improving your child's Minecraft play:

1. Play Survival and Creative Modes

Minecraft comes with five modes, but the two primary modes for kids to focus on at first are survival and creative. In Survival mode, you have to build up a place to stay the night until you have the weapons necessary to fend off the mobs (enemies), and you can die and respawn. So a focus of the game is building a mob-resistant shelter and building up your cache of weapons and tools to gain experience. In Creative mode, you can build whatever you want and not have to worry about mobs or dying. You also have access to all the blocks and items, and you can fly.

Parents should not be concerned about the violent nature of Minecraft's survival mode. Compared to typical games, Minecraft is hardly violent at all. There are some mildly scary game elements like zombies, creepers, and spiders, but that is part of the fun! The first time I played Minecraft, I was pretty scared by mob noises and having zombie characters sneak up on me. I’m still a little freaked out by it to be honest. It is just a fun game element. Minecraft is rated E for Everyone 10+, but Survival Mode is safe for most kids ages 7 or 8 and above. Creative mode would be appropriate for any age.

It also takes some practice and research to survive the first night. That's why I recommend that kids give it a try. Creative mode is great and has its own elements of challenge, but you're really going to learn the fundamentals of the game if you have to go through the process of survival and defeating the mobs. Then your child will be ready for the next steps.

Some kids, for whatever reason, don’t like survival mode. They only play in creative mode. While both modes are amazing, I feel that kids playing exclusively in creative mode will not benefit from the aforementioned coding and problem solving benefits that are so great for kids in survival mode.

2. Encourage Collaboration

Minecraft is not the type of game that kids should always play alone. Watching students in our summer camps engaging with one another in the game and building some truly amazing creations is really awesome. It's easy to connect two friends together. Get your child to have a friend come over and just plug in your IP address into the server, and (barring any firewall issues) they'll be connected and ready to play together. It is also extremely easy to set up a server to play with friends from all around the world. Personally, I think playing survival mode is best among friends because they have to take calculated risks and fight mobs.

If you are interested in having your child use Multiplayer mode in Minecraft and play with their friends, we highly recommend using Apex for your server.

For a full tutorial on setting up a server at home, visit this site.

Sometimes when kids are playing together in a server, they can get into fights because someone did something that destroyed the other person’s work. To solve this problem, I would recommend that an adult hold /op control for the server so that you can restore the world, kill all users, or ban someone if it comes to that. This isn’t particularly challenging but does require some googling. Alternatively, just make sure your child is playing with friends they get along with. Working cooperatively is much more fun in Minecraft than players trying to destroy each others work.

3. Use Mods to Mix Up Game Play

Eventually, if your child plays a lot, they will reach a level of expertise beyond your proficiency in most things. There are some amazing tutorials out there about how to add unique automations to your world. Once they have built out what they want to in their world, I would also recommend that they look into coding and modding, either through Forge or a service like Code Kingdoms. Forge is a free, but fully customizable solution, where the user has to do quite a bit of work to modify the Java using a compiler like Eclipse, then upload that code into the game. Code Kingdoms simplifies that process for the user, providing a block-based coding interface for kids to play with. Either one is useful and fun as an extra project. Plus Java is a useful language to learn for long term career prospects, and both platforms can help with that pursuit.

4. Read the Books!

I know some kids who don’t even know how to read might waste their time looking at Minecraft books, but for a child who actually spends time playing Minecraft, the books (along with the wiki) are a necessary component to learning new things and developing their skills. Just make sure your kids mix up their Minecraft reading with some fiction and non-fiction books! Check out this blogpost that is a Beginner’s Guide to Minecraft book reivew, and our other picks below!

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