To many, Facebook is a social platform that allows people to socialize and get to know each other through the internet. Facebook allows people to not only interact in a social network but also allows someone to see the networks of people they know, like being able to see the friends that the person knows. Facebook also helps promote sharing of text, photos, and videos by making posting easy but also allows for spread because it is also posted on all of your friends’ wall.
However, Facebook is not only known as a social networking site but also a game site. Games like Farmville, Restaurant City, Cafe World, Cityville, etc., can become an addiction where one can spend an entire day on a game, especially when one is starting out because of the simplicity of the game and the desire to level. For example, I have spent some time playing Restaurant City and in the game one can hire friends, plant a garden, buy furniture and fixtures, and design the restaurant front and inside. The objective of the game is to collect the ingredients and complete the recipes which have different levels and one gets the ingredients through trading with people, buying it through NPC, gardening, or freebies awarded for going on daily. A person earns money by paying the workers after certain periods of time. For me, Restaurant City was addicting because the rules were easy and there are a lot of different objectives that one can achieve. Of course, after doing the same things for a while it can get boring but Facebook continues churning out new games, luring people into playing it through their social network because for most games, the more people someone has in their gaming network the benefits they get from the game, before you know it, you are hooked and trying to invite other people to play. Of course, gaming addiction has been around for some time, the issue when Facebook games is that it threatens one’s privacy. Often times, people will “friend” someone just so they could have people on their gaming network, forgetting the fact that by “friending” someone, you are being less selective to who has access to your private information and daily life.