Count me out of these Facebook invitations

Do you remember when your mum used to warn you about talking to strangers? Well, nobody seems to care any more who they talk to and some of them are paying the price, particularly those who like to organize their social life online.

Last Wednesday, a water fight in Kensington Gardens, central London, advertised on Facebook, ended with a female student being punched to the ground after she threw some colored water over another unamused reveller. The entire event, involving about 250 youths, some brandishing knives, then descended into chaos with three small children nearby being thrown off their horses and breaking bones and nine people arrested. What fun that was.

And we all remember the teenager from Devon in southwest England, the details of whose party at her family home were put on to Facebook. Her parents were away and hundreds of strangers turned up, trashed the house and caused thousands of dollars' worth of damage. A similar incident happened to a 16-year-old at her parents' villa in Spain.