With all of the violence I hear about it, is Minecraft safe for kids to play in the ages 5-8 old?

Its OK. There's no blood or anything. When you hit a monster they just turn red and fall over.

My nephew has been playing it for at least 1-2 years and he's 9. There's servers for kids and stuff and you don't have to go online or anything so yes with supervision

Like other people said, it's cartoon violence, albeit with monsters like skeletons and giant spiders that some younger children MAY find too scary. The weapons are mainly standard fantasy gear like swords, bows and arrows, etc. I'd personally be fine with a child in that age range playing an unmodified copy of the game, though some third-party game mods add more age-inappropriate weapons such as guns.

If you have any concerns about the combat, you can set the game to peaceful mode. While you can still craft weapons, there's no need to use them because the monsters don't exist in this mode.

As alluded to earlier in my answer and in others, game mods and multiplayer servers may or may not have age-inappropriate content, so make sure to supervise your child if they want to download mods or play online.

Yes, minecraft is a good game for all ages. There are enemies like zombies and skeletons, but they aren't very scary because of the cartoony blocky textures. There's no blood either, even when you kill animals to collect meat, there's only a puff of smoke and the animal disappears.