Are you using MySQL or are you using MariaDB? They are distinct databases with different features. MySQL has had a full-featured native JSON column type since

Are you using MySQL or are you using MariaDB? They are distinct databases with different features. MySQL has had a full-featured native JSON column type since MySQL 5.7 (Oct 2015). Here's the current manual page for MySQL 8: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/json.html https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/json.html MariaDB does not have a JSON column type, instead aliasing it to LONGTEXT. MariaDB takes an alternative approach of providing JSON manipulation functions which work with stringy types. https://mariadb.com/kb/en/json-data-type/ https://mariadb.com/kb/en/json-data-type/ Note that in some Linux distributions, when you try to install "mysql" packages you instead get "mariadb", so you may need to query the server to see which one it really is!