Using Minecraft to Process Grief

Credit: Katerina Holmes

A Canadian bereavement specialist is using a unique tool to engage children with their grief: Minecraft. As it turns out, the virtual world-building video game – in which participants create structures and cities, grow food, raise animals, and create fantasy lands – can also allow them to grieve.

Music therapist Meaghan Jackson began exploring Minecraft as a grief support tool two years ago, when she launched the Minecraft Virtual Support Group for Grieving Kids. The group enables children ages 7-12 to connect with others who’ve experienced a significant loss through sharing around a virtual campfire, writing on a virtual memorial wall, or gathering objects related to their memories of the person who’s died. “It’s fun, and it’s nice to talk about,” said 12-year-old Beckett, whose father had helped create the program before he died.

Beckett, 12, plays Minecraft to memorialize his father.
Credit: Global News

An estimated one in 12 children in the U.S. will suffer the death of a parent or sibling before they turn 18, according to the 2024 report from the Childhood Bereavement Estimation Model. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, from April 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021, more than 140,000 U.S. children lost a primary caregiver – a parent or grandparent – to the virus, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics. Child bereavement psychologists including Robin Goodman, who is based in New York, say that while most of these children won’t require intensive therapy, they do need some form of psychological support.

Jackson is not the first to explore Minecraft as a way to provide space for grief. In 2022, Experience Camps – a nonprofit hosting week-long camps for grieving children – paired up with the online learning platform Connected Camps and the University of California Irvine to create ExperienceCraft. The free community, led by youth, is designed for children ages 7-15 who’ve experienced the death of a close family member, caregiver or community member. Using Minecraft and the social media platform Discord, the community normalizes grief, creates a sense of belonging, and establishes a virtual space for its members to give and receive peer support.

Meanwhile, counselors at KEMP Hospice in the UK are also using Minecraft to walk with children through the grieving process. And some developers are creating video games specifically designed to support grieving adults.

Jackson, who’s worked in child bereavement for roughly 17 years, said she has “never had such an amazing response from children than I have had working in Minecraft.” In an online presentation for the BC Centre for Palliative Care, she noted, “I’ve never had children say, ‘Oh, can we stay longer?’”