The 'The Children Yearn For The Mines' meme is a satirical trope that ironically suggests children have an ancestral or biological instinct for industrial labor, frequently using the massive popularity of Minecraft as its primary evidence. The phrase rose to prominence on social media platforms like Twitter and Tumblr around 2022, often paired with vintage sepia-toned photographs of 19th-century child laborers or modern gameplay footage. It functions as a dark-humored subversion of evolutionary psychology, framing a grueling historical reality as a natural desire. Today, the meme is widely used to joke about grind-heavy video games, repetitive tasks, or any situation involving digging and manual labor.