Reasons why minecraft is bad ? Minecraft, in recent years, has been called one of the most addictive video games on the market. The game, which is commonly described as, essentially, virtual Legos, enables players to build and destroy virtual dwellings they create themselves. It can be played with friends or strangers, is popularly used by educational institutions in relation to teaching math and is often a favorite with kids and adults who suffer from focus-related issues. Minecraft is simple to play, which, simply put, makes it widely appealing and easy to get hooked on. However, there are many hidden dangers on Minecraft.
Because of its overt simplicity, Minecraft is rated for everyone 10 and older, although it is frequently played and enjoyed by kids younger than 10. Although it is not completely free from violence, it doesn’t feature glorified shooting or killing the way other popular game genres do. The graphics are fairly rudimentary and the overall goal of the game is easy enough for even young minds to grasp. Minecraft is so popular because it can be played by all ages and is so simple it can be sneakily addictive.
Top Hidden Dangers on Minecraft
Language and/or online bullying
Although foul language and online bullying aren’t unique to Minecraft, they are certainly a concern. Like with any open world game, such as Roblox or Fortnite, your child is virtually connected to other players, which makes it difficult, at times, to monitor the language and conversations they might be privy to. One option to limit what your child is exposed to in terms of language and bullying while playing Minecraft is to mute the chat function or turn off the speakers on your computer or game console. You can also turn Minecraft on single player mode to prevent your child from interacting with others while playing the game. You may want to try to follow up each gaming session with a quick conversation about anyone your child interacted with or anything that made them feel uncomfortable.
Bad online behavior
One of the biggest drawbacks to Minecraft is the virtual bad behavior players can engage in with one another. Your child might spend some time building up a virtual building or other structure and another player can come along and destroy it or steal it. Players can also attack one another with weapons such as bows and arrows or swords in the game. Although the game doesn’t showcase the violence you might see in other video games (such as first-person shooter games), there is certainly an alarming amount of bad behavior that players can engage in. Make sure your child knows that this behavior is never okay, even if the stealing and attacking is “only” done virtually.
Video game addiction
Any video game can be addictive, and Minecraft is definitely not an exception. It can feel incredibly satisfying to build something from the ground up, see where you can improve and then try again. It can easily become an obsession, building and creating an online world where tasks are simple and straightforward. If your child seems obsessed with playing Minecraft- or any video game, for that matter- you may want to consider drastically cutting screentime or taking steps toward engaging your child in activities outside of video games. While some video gaming is perfectly acceptable, too much of anything is still too much.
Spending too much money on virtual items
Minecraft, like a number of other video games, has its own in-game currency, called Minecoins, that players can use to purchase virtual items or items from the official Minecraft store. While rewarding your child with Minecoins for a job well done or gifting Minecraft dollars for holidays and birthdays can be a fun gift, it can easily lead to your child overspending online. Ensure that your child doesn’t have access to your credit card or online currency platform such as PayPal or Venmo that would enable them to continually spend money without your permission or consent.
Overall, Minecraft is generally a fun and safe game for your child to spend time playing. As a parent, try to be aware of what your child is doing while playing while still letting them enjoy their time playing virtual building blocks with friends.
There is no finite progression in the game that may lead to monotony and demotivation.
While most video games have a constant progression into higher levels that get more and more complicated to complete, Minecraft does not really have the concept of advancement of levels. In fact, the difficulty in the game only arises if the player selects the survival mode. Unlike the adventure and creative modes, where the player gets unlimited resources and little to no challenges, in the survival mode, the player needs to acquire and allocate their resources appropriately in order to build their Minecraft world.
As a learning tool, one of the important attributes required is an orientation towards a particular goal. While Minecraft does have it’s benefits as a learning/ educational tool, the lack of quantitative measurement of one’s progress in the game makes it a little unidimensional in that aspect. Also, striving towards an undefined objective can be a cause for monotony.
Since Minecraft is not defined by levels, which is, in most cases a rewarding reinforcement to continue playing any game, it can be demotivating to the child due to the lack of a positive boost during the course of engaging in Minecraft. Impairs time management and can stunt skill development.
Losing track of time
Due to Minecraft being a limitless game, it can be easy to lose oneself and keep a track of time while indulging in it. Parents of Minecrafters have a major bone to pick with the amount of time their child spends on either playing the game or browsing through YouTube and streaming vlogs of popular Minecrafters. The more time the child spends in a virtual world, the harder it can get to stay in touch with the reality of the real world. Spending time on a game that doesn’t really challenge your child’s intelligence can make them feel adequacy with mediocrity and limit themselves to their comfort zones.
Affecting learning abilities
It is sort of like a bird constantly feeding its chicks to the point where the chicks don’t learn how to hunt for their own food or fly out of their nest. Quite a hyperbolic comparison for the effects of a video game, but anything to put a point across. Varying effects on students of different learning modalities. While Minecraft is being increasingly used in educational setups, it is important to be sensitive to the adaptivity and unique learning styles of several students. With most schools functioning online these days, Minecraft has become a useful learning tool with many teachers incorporating it into their curriculum.
Depending on the learning modality of the child, it can either be a great benefit or quite useless. Kinaesthetic learners (these people learn by doing, enacting, experimenting a concept) substantially benefit from using Minecraft to learn concepts of resource management, resource allocation, budgeting etc.
However, this may not benefit visual learners (people who learn by seeing, visualizing etc.) as much. Auditory (people who learn through listening) and tactile (those who learn through writing and maintaining records etc.) learners are the most at disadvantage when learning happens through Minecraft.
Addiction and cyberbullying
Can lead to addiction and cause other psychological issues Like most other cyber and video game-related avenues, Minecraft can also lead your child to develop an addiction, cause an acute dependency and become a victim of cyberbullying. With the software having very little parental control and the chances of your child entering into the multiplayer mode, the chances of bullying and harassment online become higher.
The only control that the parent might have is if they decide to rent a server and keep tab of the interactions their child is having online. The lack of age cap on the game means that members of varying ages are engaging with each other in a global sense and your child is more likely to either bully or be bullied than not. Apart from that, due to the sheer nature of video games, your child may get a little too deeply invested in the game and develop an addiction towards it.
Losing touch with reality
Without early intervention, the child becomes too dependent on a fictional/virtually created world and fails to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Although the game doesn’t have the kind of violence that stands out when compared to other video games, to go on to be dubbed as a ‘sandbox’ game, Minecraft still has a substantial amount of content- whether it be on the game itself, the interactions during multiplayer modes or even on the streams of popular Minecraft YouTubers.
Above is information reasons why minecraft is bad. Hopefully, through the above content, you have a more detailed understanding of reasons why minecraft is bad .Thank you for reading our post.
