Zift Advisory
Minecraft is a gaming app that encourages players to build or explore without further guidance. This app is rated for users 10 years of age and older and can be found in the App Store and the Google Play Store for $6.99. This app features in-app purchases and is safe for kids with parental supervision.
What is Minecraft?
Minecraft is an extremely popular gaming app which drops a player into a vast world and then encourages them to build or explore without further guidance. The sky is the limit here, as the user can create anywhere from small log cabins to gigantic castles, depending on what resources the user acquires.
This app is rated for users 10 years of age and older. The Minecraft app can be downloaded for $6.99 from both the App Store and the Google Play Store. This app features in-app purchases.
Daring users can try the survival mode, in which they have to craft battle gear to fight off enemies and farm, raise, or hunt for their own food.
Minecraft also has a Hardcore mode, where death is permanent and the game world is immediately, unrecoverably deleted on player death.
Is Minecraft safe for my kids?
While Minecraft is overall safe for kids, parents should know that it features zombies, which players must kill (or be killed themselves), so scary characters and violence can be a concern.
Parents with young children can set Minecraft to Creative mode, which does not feature monsters, hunger, or the possibility of death.
Since Minecraft is often played in groups, parents should note that, unless set to Creative or single player mode, their child will be playing with others and actively able to chat.
Minecraft multiplayer servers are widely divergent in terms of quality and standards of content and conduct. There are everything from unregulated “troll servers”, where the whole point is to kill anyone you see and smash their stuff, to tightly-moderated, professional servers with mechanisms for immediately muting or banning players who behave inappropriately in chat.
It is strongly suggested that parents monitor their child’s gameplay, and research family-friendly groups within Minecraft in which their children can play.
These are servers where individual players need to be “on the list” in order to join, and the standards of conduct and behavior are set up to support a safe and creative environment for friendly play.
Minecraft is sometimes used as a platform to create other games or environments. Some servers specialize in competitive Minecraft sports, like Hunger Games and building challenges, while others are closer to the vanilla Minecraft experience.
Minecraft does feature in-app purchases, both in the core game and on some independent servers.
Interested in learning more about Minecraft? Check out our Parent's Guide to Minecraft.
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