On the surface, Adopt Me! is pure digital catnip for elementary schoolers: you hatch neon dragons, dress up capybaras, and build mansions with your classmates. There is zero graphic violence, no gore, and the basic gameplay is about as gentle as it gets.

Underneath that pastel coat of paint, however, lies an intense player-driven economy that operates like an unregulated playground stock market. The game's entire social hierarchy revolves around owning rare pets, and that artificial scarcity drives a brutal trading culture where 8-year-olds regularly get swindled out of virtual items they worked weeks to earn.

If your kid is playing, you need to step in before the tears start. Turn off trades with strangers, remove stored credit cards from their device, and talk explicitly about how online scams work. It can be a harmless sandbox, but only if you put a hard frame around the social layer.