The elephant in the room here is that children in the 21st century have little to no freedom or personal control. The days of packs of children running around town or exploring the woods are long gone, due to fears of dangerous men and accidents. Children wake up, are shuttled to school, then either come back and are locked in their homes for the rest of the day, or else are shuttled off to another extracurricular activity. Nothing is unsupervised, and nothing is spontaneous. No where is this more clear than in the concept of a "play date," that a parent must schedule a meeting between two children instead of just, you know, letting them walk down the street and ring a doorbell when they feel like it.

The internet is like a parallel universe based around the exact opposite rules. You can look at whatever you want, talk to whoever you want, say whatever you want, do whatever you want, and no one is going to stop you. There is no wonder that so many suburban children become "internet addicts" these days, given that it is the sole element of freedom in their lives.

And Minecraft is the ultimate embodiment of this freedom. There is no structure or goal to it, just the freedom to wander about a crude approximation of the natural world, go on adventures by yourself or with friends, and build things with your own two hands. In short, it is a safe, sterilized version of the ancient childhood experience of wandering the woods, building forts, and carving out a society secret from the adults. It is the solution to problems we created ourselves out of fear of the world.