Family-friendly NFTs bring the next generation of youth into Web3

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) continue to be a dominant force within the Web3 space for increasing innovation and adoption. As the space continues to push its way into mainstream adoption, Web3 will reach new demographics, including the youth.

Recently, big-name entertainment company Disney, which is highly catered toward children, has expanded to include crypto-savvy team members and created partnerships with the Polygon blockchain network.

Such developments hint at an impending entrance of large entertainment companies into the world of Web3. However, big questions arise if Web3 content is to be created for minors, such as how does an NFT become kid-friendly? How does true ownership work when minors are involved?

Cointelegraph spoke with Jeremy Fisher, an artist and the founder of Lucky Ducky — a family-friendly NFT collection — about how to create Web3 content for kids and bring them into the next generation of digital interactions.

While there have been cases of NFTs being used and even created by children, such as the 9-year-old girl who fell in love with cats and made a cat NFT collection, Fisher believes parents are still the ones who should be considering what projects to support while their kids are still young.

It is “just like supporting your favorite production studio in the early days,” he said.

“We think buying and trading should be handled by adults. Once the collection is created and funded, there are many products that can spin off from the concept.

Fisher said the Lucky Ducky NFT characters are all from a new family-friendly animation series also in the works. He said that for children, popular kids shows are excellent ways to introduce Web3 concepts and “shine a spotlight on the existing IP and NFTs.”

However, as the Web3 space is still in its “Wild West” phase, Fisher said NFTs and many Web3 activities catered toward minors should still be heavily overseen by parents.

“It’s advisable for parents to be in control of anything kids are interacting with involving Web3.”

As the technology becomes more pervasive, he anticipates Web3 tools and features will be “running in the background of games and collectibles to facilitate trading,” with built-in protections and parental controls.

Nonetheless, because NFTs are great tools for general mass adoption and teaching newcomers about the space, the same applies to younger generations.

“NFTs are a really great tool to teach about investing like how a pretend stock trading game teaches how the stock market works.”

Fisher harked back to the days of receiving a savings bond from parents or family members.

“We could see that same use case play out where adults set up a wallet for the child with some NFTs to hold onto and then give them when they’re older and see how some of their favorite projects have accrued value.”

Not only would these digital assets inform young users how to interact with digital reality, but the education from NFTs can also be endless. There are already Bitcoin-themed games and educational tools, including bedtime stories, geared toward children to inform them about the usage of the cryptocurrency.