As Facebook Takes Over Their Lives, Some Teens are Pulling the Plug

Dec. 28, 2009— -- With more than 350 million active users worldwide, the social networking site Facebook has become a household name. But some households are pulling the plug.

For Michigan 10th grader Neeka Salmasi, chatting and messaging with her friends on Facebook had become a huge problem.

In the beginning, she said she'd be online for as little as 20 minutes a day, but then those minutes grew into a couple of hours on weekdays and sometimes as long as six hours on the weekend.

She wasn't doing other tasks, and her grades were slipping.

"It's like an addiction," the teen said. "You look up one moment and it's day and you look up another moment and it's night."

So in order to put Facebook in its proper place, Salmasi took action. She asked her sister to change her Facebook password at the beginning of each week and keep it hidden from her until weekends.

Neeka isn't the only teen backing away from the Web site.

Monica Reed and Halley Lamberson quickly realized that they too were wasting too much time on Facebook.

So the teens -- best friends from California -- decided to limit their use to one Saturday per month.

Click here to get extra tips to control your teen's Facebook usage.