Gen. Z and digital environments

The growing pro-metaverse contingent is perhaps the logical conclusion of decades of rhetoric that “innovation” is synonymous with “digitization.” For the twenty-somethings who populate the NFT community, the greatest and most salient innovations in their lifetime have occurred in the increasingly pleasant digital environments of their phones and gaming consoles. Meanwhile, the primary narrative they have been fed about the physical world is that it will probably kill them one day, via COVID-19 or climate change. Our generation may not be consciously hostile to the physical world, but we have little affection for it either.