My 8 year old son uses Minecraft and loves it. I did Googled for Minecraft servers, and there are hundreds.

How do I know which ones are good, and which are bad?

Can anyone recommend any?

You don’t it’s pretty unprotected game I don’t let my daughter play online with it even though I have access to a private server. If he wants to play with a few friends you can rent your own for a few £ per month and password it.

It’s not so much that servers are ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’ – there’s not much opportunity for real-world interaction on them.

The key things for me are: Make sure he plays it in a family area, rather than up in his room – and that he turns ‘chat’ off and keeps it off. There is a lot of swearing and abuse from randoms on chat.

Also, on servers, people do gang up on other people and nick their stuff, hassle them etc, so you need to keep an eye out and just teach him to find another server in those circumstances – as you say, there are plenty around.

Drac’s suggestion is a good one if he has some schoolfriends he wants to play with.

So do you think the game’s limitations are that he can play it on his own, or we take our chances out in the ‘world’?

It’s fantastic for his imagination so far. He’s been watching a few videos on YouTube for some inspiration, and they’ve spurred him on to have a go at building a rollercoaster and other huge stuff.

What do your kids do on it?

Its not too difficult to create your own server on your PC. A fixed ip helps but is not essential. Have to ask’what is an unsafe server?

I’d let him stay on his own world.

My eldest builds farms and goes out to find rare animals she’s also built a few things. She plays with the added mods though for extra stuff it’s great for kids like a unlimited lego supply.

It’s perfectly possible to play it offline and have great fun, but the servers do seem to add another dimension – playing minigames against other people, playing with your mates.

As long as you don’t think of it as a kids’ game so therefore only populated by nice children like yours, then it’s possible for him to enjoy himself.

Time limits/safe settings/over-the-shoulder checks – just treat it like any other kind of online activity.

He’s been watching a few videos on YouTube for some inspiration, and they’ve spurred him on to have a go at building a rollercoaster and other huge stuff.

Just be wary of the youtube vids because lots of them have swearing on (depending on your stance of swearing v kid’s ages)

How do I know which ones are good, and which are bad?

There are no absolutely safe ones.

Even the servers you create cause trouble! I set up one for my daughter and it causes no end of arguments between friends. She’s always banning 1 lad for killing her animals!

My daughter is 11 and I let her go on on-line servers. The worst I’ve seen in the comments is some very colourful swearing – I’m fine with this.

I see this as a black and white issue – you either let them go on-line or you don’t. Once you allow a little access it’s all they’ll want to do as it opens up the game a lot more.

I’m keeping my 6 and 8 year olds away from the online thing… its enough that they share worlds between each other, they are very capable of winding each other up.

Get a Raspberry Pi and install your own Minecraft server on your home network