I have spent many years teaching kids how to program in Java by means of Minecraft Modding. During those years, I’ve built a plethora of experience in seeing how Minecraft affects children in both good and bad ways. I in no way am saying Minecraft is a bad game. What I am saying is that Minecraft should not be the first video game your child is exposed to playing.
Minecraft is an immensely popular game due to the freedom and creativity a player is allowed to express. For that, I think Minecraft is a great game. I personally deem Minecraft the new-age virtual legos as it allows you to build whatever you desire block by block. Toys are a healthy medium by which children can exercise their mind, grow their imagination, and act it out. Because Minecraft is on a computer device, children get to familiarize themselves with devices they will potentially be using in their future career. So why is it that I view Minecraft as the worst video game for a child to play as their first video game?
- No Skill Needed in Creative Mode
Chances are that your child is playing Minecraft in creative mode and not survival mode. In creative mode, there are no consequences what-so-ever. As the name suggests, it’s a mode where you can express your creativity and build whatever you like. In this way, I think Minecraft is great for helping to nurture the creativity of the player.
Outside of the creative aspect, in most cases, young children tend to stay playing creative mode and not play the game’s survival mode. In survival mode, you need to adapt and build your knowledge and skill set to survive the world and gather the necessary items to create a portal and fight the Ender Dragon. It’s not as easy as it sounds and a person can become easily frustrated if they are playing Minecraft for the first time. These frustrations lead many-a-child back onto creative mode to play and build. Great for creative mind flexing, but not so great with building skills to take on challenges.
The more a child plays creative mode, the more they build a comfort level of not wanting to invite a challenge. One of the biggest pleasures of a kid playing creative mode is summoning monsters such as the final boss (Ender Dragon). In creative mode, you can fight any monster without being able to take damage. Kids love this aspect of creative mode and as an adult, while I don’t see the fun in killing enemies that can’t even hurt you back, I can see how it’s fun for a child. Children get glued to a game that invites no challenge and requires no skill. It is in this way that the problem leads to many other problems for children.
- Facing no Challenges in Game Transfers to Wanting no Challenge in Real Life
Children who continually stick with creative mode in Minecraft typically don’t handle challenging tasks in real life too well. As with any child, challenges can be frustrating and require extra time to help guide a child to overcome it. Because everything in Minecraft creative mode comes easy, a child will develop the mindset that if something isn’t easy, then someone else should do it for them or that they should just give up.
This mindset is commonplace amongst young children who avidly play Minecraft. They love the game and want to create their own mods, but when it comes to putting in the work to learn how to do it, they can’t because it’s too hard. Not to mention that outside of learning to program, children take this approach to many other matters such as tying their shoe, listening to a behavioral directive, or expressing outward anger the first sign of something being hard or not perfect.
- Children Develop the Everyone Wins Attitude
Due to the absence of any type of challenging gameplay, young gamers of Minecraft don’t learn the concept of working towards a goal through overcoming a challenge of a specified difficulty. The only goals they achieve is whatever they set out to build. The difficulty matches whatever effort they put into building or exploring. Because of this, children playing Minecraft never experience getting a game over or having to use their head to defeat a specific enemy or solve a puzzle. And if they do learn how to defeat enemies or build/craft a certain item in survival mode, they most likely learned how to do so on YouTube or Minecraft Wiki rather than figure it out themselves.
Children do not learn what it means to lose/fail and thus it becomes hard for young children to accept in other aspects of their life. Childhood is arguably the best time to learn what it’s like to fail, because, in order to be successful, you must experience failure. Couple this with the fact that society has now created participation awards. Some argue it’s a nice thing, others argue it isn’t because only those who work hard should be rewarded. We agree with the latter because we believe that we should not enable a mindset where simply participating is good enough. We want to encourage individuals to work hard in order to achieve a level of success they can be proud of and recognized for.
- Children Become Easily Frustrated at Tasks That Present Difficulty
All of the previous reasons build up to this point. The point that when faced with an actual challenge, a child is prone to giving up easier and/or become easily frustrated. Whether it’s learning to program, draw a picture, or playing a different video game, I’ve seen negative emotions expressed many times. In a lot of cases, I also see children venture back into their comfort zone of playing Minecraft creative mode after trying a new more challenging game for a few minutes.
Because of my experience with children and Minecraft, and my experience playing video games as a child, I know that today’s children wouldn’t last 5 minutes playing video games with actual difficulty. If you’ve ever played Donkey Kong Land 2, that game comes to mind when I think about a game that I want to let children play so that they get a feel for the skill involved to play a video game. They will surely quit and/or cry.
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Children Become Prone to Sticking with Mobile Games That Present no Skill
Many mobile games are simply clicking games. You click endlessly or in a specific way to progress in a level. These types of games can require a degree of skill and thinking, but these types of games are as far as a child who tends to play Minecraft creative mode will tend to play. Mobile gaming can be a great pass time and it’s a way out for a parent to keep their children busy. However, the addictive nature of these games combined with its relatively low skill threshold is a recipe for disaster. -
Children Become Addicts of Sensory Input
Mobile games can be addictive and many of them are simple tap games. I’ve seen many children tap tap tap tap really fast in these games and it’s detrimental to their wellbeing. At these young ages, children become so used to that type of stimuli, in this case, taping the iPad or phone. It is then that they learn to become unable to sit still when the time calls for it.
And because of the fact that they’re never presented with any challenge, children often state that they cannot control their ability to sit still and listen. Excluding children who truly cannot fully control their behavior, for the rest, it’s not that they can’t control it, it’s that they refuse to put any effort into doing so. In their eyes, it’s a challenge, and all the time spent playing Minecraft (creative mode) teaches children that you don’t have to deal with a challenge. Everything in the game revolves around the child and everything in the game follows the pace of the child.
In conclusion, if you’re a parent looking to figure out what game your child(ren) should play, consider finding an educational game for them to play. If you don’t care about your child(ren) playing an educational game, then console games are the next best bet. Most mobile games require too much mindless clicking. Most console games at least present a challenge and require strategic button input. Nintendo, in particular, is more user-friendly towards a younger audience and their modern games include ways to make the game easier for a younger audience or first-timers. Video games are a great way to build a person’s reflexes and thinking ability. Before letting your child play Minecraft, let them first be exposed to a video game that requires skill to play.
