[Infowarrior] - To Deal With Obsession, Some Unfriend Facebook

[Richard Forno]

December 21, 2009
To Deal With Obsession, Some Unfriend Facebook
By KATIE HAFNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/technology/internet/21facebook.html

Facebook, the popular networking site, has 350 million members  
worldwide who, collectively, spend 10 billion minutes there every day,  
checking in with friends, writing on people’s electronic walls,  
clicking through photos and generally keeping pace with the drift of  
their social world.

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. Their status  
might as well now read, “I can’t be bothered.”

“We decided we spent way too much time obsessing over Facebook and it  
would be better if we took a break from it,” Halley said.

By mutual agreement, the two friends now allow themselves to log on to  
Facebook on the first Saturday of every month — and only on that day.

The two are among the many teenagers, especially girls, who are  
recognizing the huge distraction Facebook presents — the hours it  
consumes every day, to say nothing of the toll it takes during finals  
and college applications, according to parents, teachers and the  
students themselves.

Some teenagers, like Monica and Halley, form a support group to  
enforce their Facebook hiatus. Others deactivate their accounts. Still  
others ask someone they trust to change their password and keep  
control of it until they feel ready to have it back.

Facebook will not reveal how many users have deactivated service, but  
Kimberly Young, a psychologist who is the director of the Center for  
Internet Addiction Recovery in Bradford, Pa., said she had spoken with  
dozens of teenagers trying to break the Facebook habit.

“It’s like any other addiction,” Dr. Young said. “It’s hard to wean  
yourself.”

Dr. Young said she admired teenagers who came up with their own  
strategies for taking Facebook breaks in the absence of computer- 
addiction programs aimed at them.

“A lot of them are finding their own balance,” she said. “It’s like an  
eating disorder. You can’t eliminate food. You just have to make  
better choices about what you eat.” She added, “And what you do online.”

Michael Diamonti, head of school at San Francisco University High  
School, which Monica and Halley attend, said administrators were  
pondering what the school’s role should be, since students used  
Facebook mostly at home, although excessive use could affect their  
grades.

“It’s such uncharted territory,” Dr. Diamonti said. “I’m definitely in  
support of these kids recognizing that they need to exercise some  
control over their use of Facebook, that not only is it tremendously  
time consuming but perhaps not all that fulfilling.”

In October, Facebook reached 54.7 percent of people in the United  
States ages 12 to 17, up from 28.3 percent in October last year,  
according to the Nielsen Company, the market research firm.

Many high school seniors, now in the thick of the college application  
process, are acutely aware of those hours spent clicking one link  
after another on the site.

Gaby Lee, 17, a senior at Head-Royce School in Oakland, Calif., had  
two weeks to complete her early decision application to Pomona  
College. Desperate, she deactivated her Facebook account.

The account still existed, but it looked to others as if it did not.

“No one could go on and write on my wall or look at my profile,” she  
said.

The habit did not die easily. Gaby said she would sit down at the  
computer and find that “my fingers would automatically go to Facebook.”

In her coming book, “Alone Together” (Basic Books, 2010), Sherry  
Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology  
and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discusses  
teenagers who take breaks from Facebook.

For one 18-year-old boy completing a college application, Professor  
Turkle said, “Facebook wasn’t merely a distraction, but it was really  
confusing him about who he was,” and he opted to spend his senior year  
off the service. He was burned out, she said, trying to live up to his  
own descriptions of himself.

But Facebook does not make it easy to leave for long. Deactivating an  
account requires checking off one of six reasons — “I spend too much  
time using Facebook,” is one. “This is temporary. I’ll be back,” is  
another. And it is easy to reactivate an account by entering the old  
login and password.

For Walter Mischel, a professor of psychology at Columbia University,  
who studies self-control and willpower, “what’s fascinating about this  
is that it involves spontaneous strategies of self-control, of trying  
to exert willpower after getting sucked into a huge temptation.”

Professor Mischel performed a now-famous set of experiments at  
Stanford University in the late 1960s in which he tested young  
children’s ability to delay gratification when presented with what he  
called “hot” temptations, like marshmallows.

Some managed to stop themselves; others could not.

“Facebook is the marshmallow for these teenagers,” Professor Mischel  
said.

Rachel Simmons, an educator and the author of “The Curse of the Good  
Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence” (Penguin  
Press, 2009), said Facebook’s new live feed format had made the site  
particularly difficult to tear oneself away from.

“You’re getting a feed of everything everyone is doing and saying,”  
Ms. Simmons said. “You’re literally watching the social landscape on  
the screen, and if you’re obsessed with your position in that  
landscape, it’s very hard to look away.”

It is that addictive quality that makes having a partner who knows you  
well especially helpful. Monica said that when she was recently in bed  
sick for several days, she broke down and went on Facebook. And, of  
course, she felt guilty.

“At first I lied,” Monica said. “But we’re such good friends she could  
read my facial expression, so I ’fessed up.”

As punishment, the one who breaks the pact has to write something  
embarrassing on a near-stranger’s Facebook wall.

After several failed efforts at self-regulation, Neeka Salmasi, 15, a  
sophomore at Greenhills School in Ann Arbor, Mich., finally asked her  
sister, Negin, 25, to change her Facebook password every Sunday night  
and give it back to her the following Friday night.

Neeka quickly saw an improvement in her grades.

Still better, she said, is that her mother no longer visits her room  
“every half an hour to see if I was on Facebook or doing homework.”

“It was really annoying,” she said.

Last year, Magellan Yadao, 18, a senior at Northside College  
Preparatory High School in Chicago, went on a 40-day Facebook fast for  
Lent.

“In my years as a Catholic, I hadn’t really chosen something to give  
up that was very important to me,” Magellan said in an e-mail message.  
“Apparently, Facebook was just that.”

In his follow-up work, Professor Mischel said he found that some of  
the children who delayed gratification with the marshmallows turned  
out to be higher achievers as adults.

Halley said she and Monica expect their hiatus to continue at least  
through the rest of the school year. She added that they were enjoying  
a social life lived largely offline.

“Actually, I don’t think either one of us wants it to end,” she said.