Most children spend at least a couple of hours looking at screens every day, so it’s crucial to make informed choices about the type of content they’re consuming. Video games make up a large chunk of that time, so it’s no wonder most parents want to know about the games their kids play.
Is Minecraft Good for Kids? What Parents Need to Know about Minecraft
Minecraft is the most popular kid-friendly game out there. It teaches children basic programming, problem-solving, teamwork, project and resource management, and fosters “out of the box” thinking. With that in mind, so many parents wonder how it influences a developing mind. Can it make kids smarter?
Various studies have tried answering this question. Glasgow university’s study from 2017 tied Minecraft to future academic success. The study discovered that individuals who played the game showed improved adaptability, resourcefulness, and communication skills - all crucial for education. While there are no studies that confirm Minecraft increases children’s IQ, here are some key benefits the game offers.
Improving Creativity and Imagination
Starting a new game in Minecraft gives players a blank canvas. They enter a randomized world made of blocks they can rearrange and remove, creating something truly unique in the process. The options are endless, so kids can create whatever they want and let their creativity shine. Redstone blocks allow them to build machines and learn some basic coding along the way.
Your little one probably won’t create something as impressive as Fallingwater house by Frank Lloyd Wright or WesterosCraft. Still, projects like these are great examples of what you can accomplish in Minecraft with enough time, dedication, planning, and cooperation. The possibilities are endless!
Encouraging Communication and Teamwork
Once children are ready to move on to more complex projects, they can start setting up shared servers to play with their friends or look for existing ones they can join. Multiplayer Minecraft games help kids understand the benefits of playing as a team and show how much more they can achieve together.
Starting a brand new map together will force kids to decide how to deal with issues like food and shelter. They might build a big farm together or delegate tasks like foraging, building, mining, and others. The game will teach them to respect each other’s projects and solve problems with their playmates.
If your child has no friends to play with, there are countless family-friendly servers they can join. Many of these servers have strict rules to ensure a safe experience for players. Kids often misbehave and break a rule or two, which can result in a ban. There’s no need to worry, all you need is a good Minecraft proxy, and you can get your little one back on their favorite server in no time.
Developing Problem-Solving Abilities
While every game involves problem-solving to a certain extent, Minecraft allows each player to set their own objectives and decide how to tackle challenges along the way. Finding shelter and a food source is one of the first problems each player runs into. Wandering around in Minecraft is perfectly safe during the day, but the world gets populated by monsters at night.
Without adequate shelter, players have to run or fight until the sun rises. It’s up to them to decide what kind of shelter they want to build, from a small hut to an elaborate fortress. As for food, they can hunt or create a farm with crops and livestock. These tasks can get boring over time, but there’s a way to automate them, forcing kids to think outside the box.
Teaching Patience and Determination
Patience is a crucial part of project management in Minecraft, even in creative mode where kids have unlimited blocks at their disposal. Projects can take anywhere from an hour to a few months to finish, so they can require a great deal of patience. Thanks to the game’s freeform structure, most children won’t even feel like they’re learning valuable skills along the way.
Hunting for rare blocks like diamond or redstone is also impossible without patience. The same is true for managing livestock, farms, and woodland - all these tasks take time. Building traps and other complex devices is a great way to develop determination. When a trap fails, a child has to figure out why. They’ll develop all these abilities naturally because they’re essential for success in the game.
Final Thoughts:
Minecraft has been a go-to creative game for children worldwide, and it’s more popular than ever. Even the base game will teach your kids valuable skills, but you can also get mods that introduce fantastic new features, like the Badlion Client. Specific servers don’t work great with mods, so this might be useful if your little one ever gets banned from a server they love.
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