Is Scratch safe for kids?
What MIT does to keep it safe
Scratch was built with kids in mind from the start. There's no direct messaging between users, MIT removed it specifically to reduce contact risks. Accounts don't require a real name or photo. All projects and comments have a report button, and MIT's moderation team reviews flagged content. Under-13 accounts have additional restrictions on what they can share publicly.
The one area to watch
The community library has millions of projects — most are games, animations, and school assignments. But some contain mild cartoon violence, jump scares, or crude humor that slips past filters. It's the same reality as YouTube Kids: moderated, but not perfectly curated.
The simplest fix: in your kid's account settings, you can turn off comments on their projects entirely. And if they're just learning to code rather than exploring others' work, knowing whether Scratch is offline matters, because the desktop version removes community exposure completely.
Is Scratch safe for 8, 10 and 11 year olds?
Yes at every one of those ages, but what you actually need to do changes as they get older.
At 5 to 7, most kids never touch the community. They open the editor, drag blocks, and make something move. There's nothing to supervise here beyond normal screen time.
At 8 to 10, kids start browsing other people's projects, and that's when the community library becomes relevant. This is the age where turning comments off on their profile is worth doing, and where it helps to know they can hit the report button on anything that looks wrong.
At 11 and up, most kids are remixing other projects and reading comments on their own work. The risk isn't contact, since Scratch has no private messaging. It's that they'll run into crude humor or a jump scare in someone else's game. Worth a conversation rather than a setting. Safety aside, what age kids should start coding is a separate question with a different answer per age band.
Is Scratch safe for school use?
Yes, and MIT built a specific account type for it. Teachers register through the For Educators page, and the Scratch Team verifies the account is a real educator before enabling the features, usually within a day.
A verified teacher account gives you a lot of control over a classroom:
Students join a class through a teacher-issued link rather than signing up themselves, so nobody needs a personal email address.
You can see every student's activity, including projects they create and profile changes they make.
You can delete student comments on profiles and studios, edit their profile pages, and reset their passwords directly.
Closing a class blocks student logins entirely, and you can reopen it whenever you want.
Student accounts also carry restrictions regular accounts don't. Since May 2025 they can't create new studios or invite curators to existing ones, which removes a whole category of open-ended community interaction from a classroom setting.
