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"A parent is hit with backlash after deleting their son's Minecraft world that he spent one year creating."
I think it would depend on what the kid was doing. Oversleeping, as in what this kid actually did? No, deleting a Minecraft world he'd spent a year on is absolutely too harsh a punishment. In this particular case, yeah, I'd say the parent was definitely the asshole. Taking away his computer privileges for a while is totally fine, though, I'd say.
On the other hand, if the kid had been doing shit like habitually throwing rocks through windows or smashing out car headlights with a baseball bat or other such egregious asshole things, I'd say having his Minecraft world deleted would probably be getting off super light. But even that... I don't think the punishment should be something that is irreversible. While it would still be kind of an asshole thing to do, I think I'd be mostly okay with the whole "tell the kid you deleted the Minecraft world, but actually have a saved backup to restore later, when the kid is no longer misbehaving" thing. That, at least, would only be a temporary scare, and not a "potentially traumatized for life" thing.
I liked Ian's comparison with LEGO building. Killing a Minecraft world would indeed be like going in and smashing a bunch of LEGO sculptures that the kid had been working on for a year, just because he was oversleeping. Or what if the kid liked to write or draw or make model airplanes or whatever? Would the parent just go in and delete or burn up the kids stories or journals or artworks or models or whatever as a punishment? I have to say that if anyone came in and destroyed the stuff I'd been writing (whether it was the pencil-and-paper journals I've been keeping since 2014, or, hell, even the online shit I've been doing since 2005 or so, or the novel I'm [air quotes] currently working on [/air quotes] or whatever), I think I may well be induced to literal murder at that point. ¬_¬
