It’s 10 p.m. and the deadline for your paper is midnight, yet you find yourself staring at your Facebook page, constantly searching for an excuse to click another picture, read another status or find out what an old friend has been up to.

Facebook has been distracting students since 2004 and has progressively become more addicting. With constant updates and the ability to keep in contact with whomever you please, you are able to distract yourself — one click at a time.

Facebook users come in all kinds, but there are four distinct categories: the avid updater, frequent friender, obsessive uploader and the constant creeper.

The avid updater

Sam Chambers, originally from Sacramento, Calif., joined the Facebook network because he thought it would be a great way to meet people from Kent State. Little did he know Facebook would become such a huge part of his life.

Chambers, a senior political science major, finds himself updating his status as many as three to four times a day.

“I want people to know what I’m doing,” Chambers said. “I like to think I brighten everyone’s day with a funny status, a funny quote or a funny picture. I also like to express how I’m feeling, but mainly I like to improve someone’s day.”

For Chambers, Facebook is not all fun and games. He has begun to realize Facebook has distracted him so much that he has forced himself to shut off his Internet entirely when he’s swamped.

“Everyone is constantly updating their statuses and I just want to see what they are doing,” Chambers said. “A lot times I have to turn off my Internet or not use my computer at all because the temptation is too great to go on Facebook.”

The frequent friender

When it comes to Facebook friends, Ashley Belcik, a junior middle childhood education major, says she has plenty.

“I have over 1,000 Facebook friends and I don’t even know half of them,” Belcik said. “Recently I started deleting the people I don’t know.”

Belcik’s long list of friends originated because she accepted every person that wanted to add her. Belcik said at the time, having a lot of friends was “the cool thing to do,” but since then her thoughts have changed.

“I didn’t think it was a big deal. I just always accepted them because I thought it was the cool thing, to have a lot of friends,” Belcik said. “But now that I am older and more mature, I am careful about who I accept because I know that there are potential employers out there, who may be viewing my profile.”

Belcik said she has had to de-friend some of her Facebook friends and has even been forced to block some of them because they were creeping a little too hard.

“I had a list of 25 people on my block list — not even kidding,” Belcik said. “People would add me and then they would creep on me and send me messages, so I just decided to block them.”

The obsessive uploader

Katie Steinhoff, a senior applied communications major, has 114 photo albums and 32 videos uploaded on Facebook — and counting. That number has changed twice since the first draft of this article.

Steinhoff said she uploads pictures after every weekend.

“I mainly upload pictures because people know that I took pictures that weekend and they will write on my wall asking me to put them up,” Steinhoff said. “I guess that influences me and I enjoy doing it.”

Not everyone who is Steinhoff’s friend is able to view her 114 albums. She has made sure that her pictures are not accessible to her grandma, aunts and uncles.

“I don’t want my family members looking at my Facebook pictures because they would take it out of context at family gatherings,” Steinhoff said. “That would be uncomfortable for me if they brought up my Facebook Wall, history and the photos I took while I was out partying with my friends.”

The constant creeper

Rachel Wall, a senior interpersonal communication major, openly admits to Facebook creeping.

“I’ll creep on ex-boyfriends to see if they are dating anyone else and to see if I look better than their new girlfriends,” Wall said. “Generally I’ll look at girls I went to high school with because those are the people I don’t see as much. I like to see what they are up to, and to be honest, I want to see if the girls I graduated with got fat.”

Wall explained how convenient creeping is and how creeping has connected her with people she hasn’t seen in a while.

”I’ve gone through people I know to find other people,” Wall said. “But once I start doing that, I look at even more people. I’ll find people I went to kindergarten with through people I knew in high school.”

Wall says that her iPhone has made creeping even easier.

“I’m always checking my phone to see who is on the chat feature and I’m constantly checking people’s status updates,” Wall said. “I would say I wake up looking at Facebook and throughout the day I look at it probably once in each of my classes.”

The iPhone has made things much more convenient as well.

“I’ve friended people from a class while we were in class,” Wall said. “Maybe I’m not sitting next to them at the time, but it just comes into my head, ‘Oh yeah I’ve wanted to friend that person,’ so I just friend them then and there.”

Wall thinks everyone is guilty of creeping.

“I’m just the one who is willing to admit it,” Wall said.

Contact Kristen O’Brien at [email protected].