As an extension and expansion of the real world, the metaverse is highly sought after for its enormous opportunities in commercial applications such as gaming, education, healthcare, shopping, and social networking, etc. At the same time, due to the fact that the design and development of the metaverse mainly targets young users, the potential risks it poses to minors have also attracted great attention from various countries.

With the popularization and application of the Internet, minors' network security risks, such as addiction to mobile phones, personal information leakage and abuse, pornography and violence, bullying and fraud, occur frequently. The highly immersive and virtual avatar experiences of the metaverse confuse the boundaries between reality and the virtual world, resulting in minors becoming several times more addicted to the metaverse than traditional networks. The above-mentioned risks will not disappear in the metaverse, but will present more serious consequences in the form of the metaverse. The text-based content supervision strategy applicable to 2D Internet will not be applicable to the legal supervision of the behavior-based in the metaverse, which challenges the existing legal system of network supervision and the future governance of the metaverse.

The protection of minors on the internet has been listed in the legislative work plan of The State Council of China has repeatedly. The State Cyberspace Administration of China has rare provision in Article 11 of the "Regulations on the Protection of Minors in the Network ": "The state encourages and supports the strengthening of scientific research and talent cultivation in the field of network protection for minors. "In the past two years, the academic research on the protection of minors in China has been confined to the traditional Internet. The research on the metaverse has focused on macro issues such as the possibility of the concept of the metaverse, the relationship between technology and human beings, and the research on the legal regulation of the metaverse has remained in the level of demonstrating the construction of legal framework and legal logic in the virtual and real world. Up to now, the Chinese database has not yet retrieved the monographs on risk prevention and legal regulation of the metaverse for minors.

This paper focuses on the risk prevention of minors in the metaverse and legal issues related to metaverse governance. The research approaches of this paper is as follows: The first part explores the essence of the metaverse, revealing the underlying logic of digital capitalism and game capitalism in the operation of the metaverse; The second part studies the operation characteristics of the metaverse. Immersive experience and virtual avatar are the characteristics of the metaverse that are different from the traditional Internet; The third part analyzes the survival of minors in the metaverse and the risks and problems they face; The fourth part attempts to propose comprehensive governance paths for the metaverse from a legal perspective, including technological regulation, government regulation, and digital literacy cultivation.