The Modern Day Opium Den

In 2052, you refuse to allow your teenage children to purchase NFTs.

After instigating another night of fighting as your dinner is ruined, both teenagers stand up in a huff and walk their plates back to the kitchen. Your husband stares sternly at you from across the table as the youngest plays quietly with her food. You’ve had this conversation many times, and you are committed to standing your ground yet again.

“You do realize that at some point they need to be able to buy them. I mean, for heaven’s sakes it’s a part of life now! Do you really want them to grow up in some hermetically sealed bubble? It’s not good for their socialization!”

You won’t give in tonight. You’ll stand your ground. But you know the time is coming soon.

As the children were born, the tidal proliferation of NFTs was exciting at first. Simply elated to share your passion with the babies, you brought up Chromie Squiggles and Fidenzas on screens near their beds in hopes to instill a sense of culture. As toddlers, they played with VeeFriends stuffed animals and the middle boy even dressed up as a Bored Ape for three Halloweens in a row.

Reality soon set in. Leaving work early one day to pick up the kids, you noticed in the pickup lane that a group of children were not interacting with each other, but staring vacuously into their eyeglasses and rapidly scanning rows within their headsets. They just stood there. Staring into virtual space.

“Justin, what were the Thornton boys doing while they were waiting to be picked up?”

Absentmindedly opening his book, your middle child mumbles, “trading NFTs, I guess.”

The magnitude began to dawn on you. Nearly everywhere you looked, you realized that youth were no longer interacting with each other in any sort of meaningful way - not even on video games. The hunt for the next cool NFT was all that mattered. Parents ascribed value to digital objects they defined as “high art” but really it was just a status game.

Children are no different.

They, too, became obsessed with the newfound status that would come with owning the latest toy NFT, or a character in an animated show they could play with in their metaverse. Some children coalesced around other children with expensive NFTs, immediately grasping the magnitude of a culturally significant digital object albeit specific for that age range.

The obsession was grotesque on levels that far exceeded anything you saw growing up with social media. Mainstream ownership of digital objects, once heralded as the future, now became the source of infighting and division the likes of which you had never witnessed. Anonymous identities bullied with abandon and the financialization of cultural assets made many people long for the days when the genie was back in the bottle.

And you kept the genie in the bottle. Your children were not permitted to buy, sell, and trade NFTs. A “rudimentary life” of old fashioned social media, you decreed.

But as your children grew older and neared young adulthood, you knew the time would soon come.

The time when they would get their first dopamine hit minting a generative art piece.

The thrill of finding an upcoming artist early, then selling the NFT for multiples of what they bought it for.

The satisfaction of basking in a compliment from a friend: “wow, you have a piece from THAT collection?! Unbelievable..”

And just like you, they would be hooked.