Facebook games creating risks for your kids?

Recently I’ve been playing around with Facebook and realized how much fun it can be to play their games. Most of my friends are in to the game called Mafia Wars. Mafia Wars is a game where you basically start a Mafia by robbing, fighting and killing…. you know, the perfect online game for all ages (not!) :)  Anyhow, the point to this game is to grow your group of friends, buy properties, buy weapons and gain experience points to become a more powerful Mafia. The game encourages its participants to invite ever growing lists of people to their Mafia to gain power through interlinking different players. While there’s really nothing wrong with the game (its quite fun) and much better than actually acting out any of the things portrayed in the game in real life, the fact that it encourages users to invite others presents an issue.

Recently facebook groups have been developed specifically with the intention of listing your facebook identity so that others can add you to their virtual mafia. See the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/topic.php?uid=81633259992&topic=7560

The issue begins when you start growing your friends in an uncontrolled manner, you or your children quickly add so many people that you do not know just to be participants in the game. This gives rise for potentially sexual or (continue reading...)