Best Child-friendly/bully-free Minecraft Server for Young Kid

my son will be 9 in September and he is not allowed to play any games online. he is a fiend for Minecraft - he has it on his own tablet, and my ipad, and plays at his cousin's house. all offline. I see zero need for that. the potential benefits (are there even any?) nowhere come close to outweighing the risk.

I don't see any reason to connect him to an online server.
Our son just started playing this (he's 16) and he's fine playing it offline.
There's no way to tell how old ANYONE is online.
You get kids pretending they are adults and adults pretending they are kids.
Kids do get online anyway eventually - but it's better if they do it after they have an idea how to do it safely (never give out real info, etc).

My son and his friends set up their own server. They can invite other school friends or not. There are about 5 of them that play together. Sadly, they have had times where one kid thinks it's funny to destroy something another kid created and then feelings are hurt. It's been a learning process for my son. These are good friends and not bullies...and it STILL happens! Some kids just don't make the best decisions sometimes. I think they got all the kinks worked out, but it took a couple years. So, honestly, I would recommend having your son and a group of his friends set up their own private server.

Our kids play minecraft all the time and don't go online to play it unless they play all together as a group. They play on our old phones that don't have any plans on them. So they're not using any data or anything. They play for hours on games all the time. If they need to be online they use our wifi.

My husband says for you to go to reddit.com and ask your question there. It's a discussion forum and you'll need to find the one most suited to your question.

No one can prove their child is 8 or anything. I would assume the people the kiddo was playing with are questionable in any case.

My daughter (almost 9) has been playing for a while now and recently started going into online servers.

I allow her to while I am in the room so that I can keep an eye on the chat section. Her favorite server is play.emeraldisle.net. They have their own plot to build and only people they have invited into it can build there. No matter what server they go on there will always be not so nice kids of different ages. My daughter has a few online friends that she meets with in the game.

The safest one I know of is Scrafty, it is a Christian based Minecraft homeschool site with strict rules. I know they allow non homeschoolers in there you just need to sign up.
http://whenyouriseup.com/

We use it for some classes.

Remember to always be with your child while they are online to be sure they don't give any personal information.

What platform is he playing on? Servers are different depending on what platform they are playing on (ie PC, Playstation etc)
My boys have found a couple of great servers they play on on a regular basis. They are out there.

Set up your own private realm. I know 2 people who did this. Only people on an approved list can connect, so you can control who your child is playing with. There is a small cost to it, but it's better than playing on a public server.

(this applies to the PC version)
https://minecraft.net/realms

We are still playing in creative mode, offline. Kiddo's 8. His school has a server available through the school's Minecraft club. Next year we may look into letting him attend that (it's actually an afterschool enrichment) if he's not wanting to continue on his Lego robotics group.

You are right to try and look into the on-line game before you let your child play. One reason: other people can go in and destroy what you have built. Most on-line servers will expel someone for a period of time if they do that and a complaint is made, but that would be after your son's hard work went down the drain. Playing off-line or creating a server that you control would be best.

M.