What is Minecraft? A Minecraft guide for parents

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And that’s before you get into the sprawling world of online servers, custom mods, and the surprisingly advanced world of Minecraft coding.

So whether you’re nodding along cluelessly as your 8-year-old explains their redstone-powered Nether portal, or you’re just trying to figure out if it’s actually safe to let them play, we’ve put together this friendly, no-nonsense guide.

Think of it as your fast-track to understanding the game, the jargon, the safety side – and how Minecraft could be doing more for your child than you realise.

Jump to:

What age is Minecraft for?
Is Minecraft safe for kids?
Is Minecraft a cross-platform game?
What to consider when your kids play Minecraft?
Minecraft Coding & Minecraft Education Edition
All the Minecraft words you need to know

If you’ve ever heard your child talking about battling mobs, riding redstone rails or heading into the Nether to fight piglins and dodge netherwart, you might have wondered if they’ve made up an entirely new vocabulary.

But don’t worry – you’re not alone. Minecraft isn’t just a game – it’s a major pop culture force, with a shared language and community that spans generations. It influences everything from YouTube trends to classroom coding lessons – and once you’re in, you start to see why kids love it so much.

The real beauty of Minecraft is that it’s an infinite canvas for creative exploration. Kids can build anything – from dream homes and rollercoasters to working calculators and entire cities. (Yes, someone even built a working version of Minecraft inside Minecraft.)

The game is regularly updated with new block types, mobs (that’s Minecraft for creatures like sheep, wolves and creepers), and different environments – known in-game as biomes – for your child to explore.

It’s not just fun either. Minecraft supports collaborative play, storytelling, problem-solving, and even real coding. It’s why so many schools use it as a teaching tool – and why Minecraft Education Edition is growing in classrooms across the UK.

One of the easiest – and most fun – ways to get to grips with Minecraft is to jump in and play it with your child. It supports multiplayer mode, so you can join forces in the same world, build something brilliant together or go on a survival adventure (if you’re feeling brave).

Kids love showing you around their creations, and it’s a great opportunity to chat about how they play, who they play with, and set any boundaries together in a relaxed way.

For more kids tech, check out our selection of the best tablets for kids. And if you're looking for more games, check out our best Pokémon games for Switch or best Switch games for kids articles.

What age is Minecraft for?

Minecraft has a recommended age rating of PEGI 7, meaning it is recommended for children aged 7+.

PEGI, or the Pan European Game Information, are the European rating board that assigns a content rating to video games.

Just because Minecraft is labelled as a game for children aged 7+ doesn't mean that it doesn't have an older fanbase, and many players (myself included) have been crafting since the day the game first released in 2011.

As we said before, Minecraft is really a blank canvas that opens up a literal world of creativity, so we encourage any parent whose child loves Minecraft to get involved and give the game a try themselves.

What are PEGI ratings?

Is Minecraft safe for kids?

When playing offline, Minecraft is perfectly safe for children. As its age suggests, there is no content within the game that is unsuitable for children aged 7+.

Things can get a bit spooky as the sun sets in Minecraft, as this is when the world's creepiest mobs, including zombies, skeletons and spiders, take over the world. Beating these mobs by building a house and crafting tools and weapons is a huge part of the Minecraft survival experience, but it can get a bit unsettling at times thanks to Minecraft's particularly intricate sound design.

Overall, the content within Minecraft is colourful, child-friendly and is designed to ease players into the specifics and mechanics of the world.

Now, multiplayer is a different ballgame. There is a lot of information out there and a lot of ways to play, which we've tried to simplify as best we can while offering links to additional resources.

Multiplayer gameplay with Minecraft can get quite complex, and you'll often see quite complex terms like servers, LAN and Realms used to describe the ways in which Minecraft players can connect to play together.

Ultimately, there are 2 ways to play multiplayer Minecraft. Local Access Network and couch co-op allow players on the same network or using the same console to play together. Online multiplayer is available using a couple of different methods.

Minecraft Realms, an official service operated by Mojang, the company that runs Minecraft, allows players to connect to their own private server that can only be accessed by invited players. Then there are public servers, which are moderated and controlled by third parties (though they still have to stick to Minecraft's Community Guidelines to ensure they are safe for all ages).

For LAN play, multiple devices can be connected together in order to play in the same world. Only devices connected to the same network will be able to connect.

Realms is managed by Mojang itself and comes with robust parental controls in addition to the parental controls available for individual devices like Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. This is a paid service that requires a subscription, with price tiers dictating the number of players who can play simultaneously.

For example, the £3.99 subscription allows for you + 2 additional players to join the same private server, while the 'Realms Plus' subscription costs £7.99 and allows for you + 10 players. This is the safest way to play online as it is closely managed by Mojang and only allows invited players to access a secure, private server to play together.

Join Minecraft Realms

Unlike many other games, Minecraft allows anyone to host a server, allowing people to connect to their world and play together without a subscription. This is a huge part of why Minecraft became so popular, with huge servers of people working together to build incredible things. However, these are public servers and, as such, come with certain risks.

Thankfully, there's a guide to Minecraft community servers on the Minecraft website. There is also an Official Minecraft Server List where the servers featured adhere to the community standards and guidelines.

Playing online now requires an Xbox Live account, Microsoft's free-to-join social network for gamers. These accounts are free to create and will give each user what's called a gamertag, which is used as their name while playing Minecraft.

As Mojang notes in their guide to Minecraft multiplayer server safety, "By creating an Xbox Live account and gamertag, when logged in, you can set your own privacy and multiplayer preferences, create and manage accounts for your family members." The guide goes on to say, "because everyone will have an account, if you do run into any creepers ruining the fun, it’s easy to report them, and for our Enforcement team to identify the player in question."

Within Minecraft's pause menu, players are able to add, mute, block or report other players when playing online.

You can also manage other players' permissions when they join your worlds, choosing who can build and mine, attack players and mobs or use doors and switches, allowing players control over their worlds. There is also a range of moderation options and chat filters available, which you can find out more about in the Minecraft multiplayer server safety guide.

Is Minecraft a cross-platform game?

Yes, Minecraft is cross-platform. Currently, Minecraft is available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5, iOS and iPad OS, Amazon Fire, Android, Chromebook, Mac OS and Windows.

Cross-platform refers to players' ability to play online or locally with their friends regardless of the device. Thankfully, Minecraft players can play online together locally or via Realms or community servers, no matter the device each player is using.

If your child has a Switch, then they'll be able to join their friends playing on an iPad to craft away.

What should you consider when your kids play Minecraft?

The first thing to mention here is that there are technically 2 versions of the base Minecraft game: Java and Bedrock. These games are essentially the same, though there are slightly different ways to do things like connect online. Bedrock is the most common version of the game and the one available on the most platforms.

Minecraft, like any game, gets updates and expansions regularly with new content added, including new tools, blocks and things to craft. There is also a Minecraft Marketplace where players will find an ever-expanding catalog of creator content made by everyone from Mojang themselves and brands like Disney and Marvel to the players themselves. The marketplace includes skins (basically outfits for your character), texture packs that can change the appearance of the Minecraft world and more.

Purchases within the Marketplace are made using Minecoins. You can purchase packs of Minecoins from as low as £1.99, which will get out 320 Minecoins.

Buy Minecoins

Instead of Minecoins, players on PlayStation use Tokens to purchase expansion content from the Marketplace, with prices starting from £1.69 for 320 Tokens.

Buy Tokens

There are also 2 additional and entirely separate Minecraft games which offer completely different experiences for Minecraft fans. Minecraft Dungeons is a dungeon crawler where players dive deeper into the world of Minecraft to battle mobs, find epic gear and save the world. Minecraft Legends is a strategy RPG in which players lead battles to defend the Overworld from piglins. Both of these games are sold separately.

Minecraft Coding & Minecraft Education Edition

Believe it or not, Minecraft is one of the best educational tools money can buy. Beyond the core creativity and problem-solving skills children can learn through the core game, Mojang have also released a version of the game specifically designed for education.

The appropriately named Minecraft: Education is a version of the base Minecraft game that encourages immersive learning through creativity. There are a variety of lessons available in Minecraft: Education, including computer science classes, where children will learn to code, AI foundations, cyber safety, as well as math, science and climate science.

All of these lessons use the unique world of Minecraft and the core mechanics of the game to help children learn in a fun and creative environment.

Coding is a hugely valuable skill in the modern world, and Minecraft is the perfect place to give your child a foundation in the basics. With their Minecraft Hour of Code tutorial, kids can solve puzzles while learning the core principles of coding. Beyond that, there are more advanced lessons in coding games as well as using programming languages like Python.

We should point out that many of these lessons are geared towards the US curriculum, but with so much content available, there are plenty of ways to learn.

All the Minecraft words you need to know

Like we said earlier, Minecraft has its own language, and with such an expansive world, it can be difficult for parents or new players to fully get on board with the core elements of the game. That's why we've put together a short glossary to help you learn the language.

Overworld: This is the main world in Minecraft where a majority of your time is spent.
Biome: Minecraft is full of unique environments, including a variety of forests, mushroom fields, mountains, caves, swamps, deserts and more. These are all referred to as biomes.
Mob: Any living creature that isn't you (the player character) is considered a mob. That includes villagers, sheep, pigs, wolves and chickens as well as the more sinister mobs like creepers, skeletons and spiders.
Creeper: Probably the game's most iconic mob, creepers are green, mean and have a very short fuse. They're prone to exploding if you get too close or aggravate them.
The Nether: The Nether is another world within Minecraft that is accessed by building a Nether portal out of obsidian and then activating it using flint and steel. This dark world is home to a range of different mobs, including ghasts and piglins.
Piglins: Part human, part pig, these gold hunters are primarily found in the Nether.
Redstone: One of the most powerful tools in Minecraft, redstone can be used to power a bunch of stuff using redstone circuits. Players have made some seriously cool things using redstone, including fully functional computers.
Mods/Modding: Minecraft is an incredibly flexible game, but there is a whole community dedicated to building on top of the core game using mods or modifications. Creators alter the core code of Minecraft to change aspects of the game, including characters, mechanics and environments.
Vanilla: This is the term used for the base Minecraft game without any mods.
Survival Mode: This is the primary game mode in Minecraft where players start with no resources and must mine, gather and craft their way through the game, all while trying to survive mobs and hunger.
Creative Mode: The alternative to Survival, Creative is the best mode if you want to just build incredible things. You start with access to all blocks, tools and items and can build to your heart's content. You can fly, move really fast and won't die.
Enderman: These are spooky teleporting mobs that won't do much unless you stare at them. Killing an enderman is one way to get an ender pearl.
Ender Pearl: This is a powerful item that allows the user to teleport to wherever it lands when thrown. They are also used to craft eyes of ender, which are required to create an end portal to The End.
The End: Like the Overworld and the Nether, The End is another realm in Minecraft and is considered by many to be the closest thing to an ending you'll find in Minecraft. There you can take on the ender dragon to for the ultimate Minecraft bragging rights.

What are PEGI ratings?

Similarly to movies and TV, video games have age ratings to help parents understand what is suitable for your child. In Europe, the PEGI system is gives each game submitted a rating depending on a range of content descriptors.

The ratings they use are similar to those used by the BBFC when rating movies and TV.