The children yearn for the mines.

This meme has been around for a while — if you were anywhere close to Twitter in 2022, you’ve seen it. It’s sparked conversations about child labor laws and the intricacies of the American economy, but mostly, it’s a meme about Minecraft.

It seems that both children and adults yearn for the mines, literally and proverbially. My brother and I grew up on Minecraft and spent years building worlds together. We made towers that stretched up to the highest block limit and explored the Nether and The End together. We showed all of our friends our worlds when they came over. When the redstone update came out, we taught ourselves how sticky pistons worked. We tested out new blocks and fought new mobs. We watched streamers together on the weekends. We played hide and seek in giant treehouses and brick fortresses.

I thought that Minecraft would be something that would phase out of my life as I got older, but on the weekends I often find myself booting up Java edition. One of my close friends and I have been building a server together over the past year, and every weekend I get a text saying “minecraft soon?”. We sit together for hours, not checking our phones at all, completely immersed in our world outside of the world.

I have been trying to figure out what it is about Minecraft that makes it so appealing. How can a game based around stacking cubes and fighting strange creatures and digging for diamonds be so engaging? Why does it carry the same appeal to nine-year-old me and twenty-year-old me?

Minecraft has something for everyone. Do you want to see how many times you can die in three minutes? You can do that. Do you want to build parkour courses or battle people atop floating islands? It’s possible. Do you want to build a quartz mansion or a wooden maze or a massive cathedral? Trade with villagers or explore the ocean floor? The possibilities are only as limited as your capacity for imagination. 

I think what is appealing about Minecraft is this capacity for freedom. Both as children and adults, we want to think for ourselves and explore the world around us. Open world games like Minecraft give us this freedom and allow us to take control of our own thoughts and passions. It encourages growth and development for our own sake in a noncontroversial environment. It grants us independence and autonomy, and it does so in an innocent and enjoyable way. 

Minecraft encourages the creativity, passion and freedom that we deeply desire. That is why children — and adults — still yearn for the mines.