Introduction

As of MySQL 5.7.8, MySQL supports a native JSON data type that enables efficient access to data in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) documents.

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/json.html

Remarks

Starting from MySQL 5.7.8, MySQL ships with a JSON type. Lots of devs have been saving JSON data in text columns for a log time but the JSON type is different, the data is saved in binary format after validation. That avoids the overhead of parsing the text on each read.