Facebook FarmVille a Classroom Obsession

As the Byrds once sang, to everything there is a season, a time to plant, a time to reap.  For about 22 million Facebook users, that time is right now.  According to Zynga, the company who created Facebook’s FarmVille application, that is the number of people who log on at least once a day to till their fake land and harvest their imaginary crops in the online game.

For the uninitiated, FarmVille is a game on Facebook where players plant crops on virtual farms.  You start off with some land and some seeds and earn online coins for successful harvests.  You can use your coins to buy more land and seeds, buildings, farm animals and more.  The catch is that like a real farmer, you must keep on top on things and harvest your crops in a timely manner.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that a large number of these fake farmers are kids, who are tending their virtual crops at the expense of their real-life educations and social lives.   As Taylor Lee Silvas, a student at the University of California, Riverside, complains, all his friends can talk about these days is FarmVille and he longs for the day when conversations center around real life again.  Teachers echo the sentiment and suggest that for many kids, FarmVille has become an obsession.

The most popular application in the history of Facebook, more than 62 million people have signed up to play FarmVille.  That large number, say some, is a sign that many people are longing for a more pastoral life.   That sounds nice, but I suspect there is another reason for FarmVille’s popularity.  Kids love to play games and this one is designed in such a way that it never, ever ends.  Players can go on farming forever and ever.  And until the next big thing comes along, they will.

Image: sabrina.dent/Flickr

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Tags: Facebook, facebook games, farming, farmville, gaming, online, online games, sandy maple, virtual worlds