'Defriending' Facebook: when social networking starts to get in the way of real life, some teens are deciding to log off.

• Author: Hafner, Katie
• Position: TECHNOLOGY

Facebook has 350 million members worldwide who, collectively, spend 10 billion minutes there every day, checking in with friends, writing on people's walls, clicking through photos, and generally keeping up with who's doing what at any given moment. Make that 9.9 billion and change.

Recently, Halley Lamberson, 17, and Monica Reed, 16, juniors at San Francisco University High School, made a pact to help each other resist the lure of the login. "We decided we spent way too much time obsessing over Facebook, and it would be better if we took a break from it," Halley says.

The two friends now allow themselves to log on to Facebook on the first Saturday of every month--and that's it.

They are among the many teens who are recognizing the huge distraction Facebook presents--the hours it consumes, to say nothing of the toll it takes during exams and college applications.

In fact, while "Internet addiction" is not really an official medical diagnosis, spending excessive time online is a growing problem worldwide, not only with social networks but also with gaming and other online activities. As many as 1 in 8 Americans suffer from problematic Internet use, according to researchers at Stanford University in California. The numbers are higher in some Asian countries, especially for teens: Up to 30 percent of South Koreans under 18, for instance, are at risk of Internet addiction, according to researchers at Hanyang University in Seoul.

TOUGH TO DEACTIVATE

Treatment centers for Internet addiction have sprung up not only in Asia but in the U.S. as well. They range from military-style boot camps to residential treatment centers similar to those used for drug and alcohol addiction.

When it comes to staying off Facebook, some teens, like Monica and Halley, are forming support groups. Others deactivate their accounts or ask someone they trust to change their password and keep control of it until they feel ready to have it back.

Facebook, launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, then a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard, won't say how many users have deactivated service. But Kimberly Young, a psychologist who is the director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery in Bradford, Pennsylvania, says she's spoken with dozens of teens trying to break the Facebook habit.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"It's like an eating disorder," says Young. "You can't eliminate food. You just have to make better choices about what you eat." She adds, "And what you do online."

At its...