. tonight on "nightline," obesity, boarding school. as childhood obesity rates soar higher than ever, one radical school promises even the most dangerously overweight kids a way out. we follow three teens' emotional journeys to lose hundreds of pounds. and mark zuckerberg, how's this for a time line? mega billionaire on friday, married on saturday, then sued by tuesday. inside the facebook fiasco. plus, an idol life. tonight another big winner, but the post idol road is not always paved in gold. from cutting hair, to singing in

karaoke bars. we track down some former american idols to find out where are they now. good evening, i'm cynthia mcfadden. tonight we take you inside a boarding school that's a last resort for critically overweight teens whose lives may hang in the balance. in a country where nearly one in three kids is overweight or obese, they are not alone. and the road to health is a difficult one indeed. abc's juju chang was invited inside to meet three teens with the courage to make a change. >> let's go. >> jenna weighs 240 pounds, a morbidly obese teenage, she's already diabetic and even has trouble walking.

>> i see it as fat. >> reporter: she says she was struggling and being taunted. >> being called a white whale, hippo pot mus and many other names. >> reporter: that's terrible. how does that affect you when you hear those words? >> it affects me like miserable, very sad and helpless. >> reporter: as a last resort her parents pulled together thousands of dollars in tuition to send her here on the welspring academy in rural north carolina. it's a boarding school like no other for kids 11 to 18. she joined students like 16-year-old michael schlesinger who arrived nine months ago, weighing 428 pounds. was there a straw that broke the camel's back? >> just being out of breath walking down the block. i had enough. the seat belts became a problem. >> reporter: in the car? >> yeah.

it bothered me to know that i can't even barely sit in the car anymore. >> reporter: he says his first week felt like torture. >> my shin splints, it would hurt to walk. >> reporter: how many times did you want to quit? >> in that first week, i don't think i can count that high. >> reporter: weight loss is the core curriculum here. the school year is literally a race to save their students' lives. they'll spend months cut off from their families, they get two ten-minute phone calls home a week. they'll eat every meal in this cafeteria. they're not as obsessed with counting carbs. they're focused on fat, their goal is zero grams a day. >> veggie, sausage, and egg beaters with ketchup. >> reporter: they offer a portion controlled salad bar designed to teach stuns self-control. no tv except in the jim and no food outside the dining hall.

of course the students have a weekly weigh-in. >> how did you do on monday? >> 269. >> how did you do today? >> 267.5. >> reporter: all right! what was that like to get on the scale the first time? >> i lost 15 pounds the first time. it made me want to keep going. >> reporter: over nine months, he lost 160 pounds. the students are rewarded for brisk morning walks and intensive exercise. >> i just want to go lay down. >> there you go. put your hands over your head. >> reporter: but the physical demands send her to the emotional brink. >> god put me here for a reason and my mom and dad put me here for a reason. they want to help me lose weight and they're doing the same thing at home. >> reporter: it's a lonely battle, but she's far from alone. childhood obesity has tripled over the past 30 years, now every one in three school-age

kids in america is obese or overweight. but wellspring believes the solution to this epidemic lies as much in a kid's mind as in their metabolism. >> i just feel very nauseous. i took a drink of water. >> here, in addition to math and history, the students will undergo intense behavior modification, through meticulous food diaries. >> every day, you do what you ate in that meal, the calories, the fat grams. >> combined with talk therapy. >> i'm pedrified of gaining even like five pounds. >> sydney has been here nine months and is about to graduate. she got here weighing 211 pounds. >> within the span of an hour, i would eat like a day's worth of calories. >> reporter: she's lost 67 pounds total, but she still sees a 200-pound girl staring back at

her. >> i'm very aware of all the weight, and so it's hard to like shake that feeling. >> reporter: right. so once again it's easier to shed it physically, but harder to shed it in your mind. >> absolutely. >> reporter: all weight loss programs have a 90% failure rate. here they claim 2/3 of their graduates maintain their weight loss. the entire package costs $50,000 for an academic year. >> reporter: was it easy for your parents to pay for this? >> not really. how did they do it? >> i don't know. >> reporter: his own father didn't recognize him on his last visit home. for spring break. >> he walked right by me. wrrr. >> reporter: what did you say? >> i tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned and we went on aur

way. sydney just went to her prom and showed off her new figure to her friends. jenna has lost 30 pounds and found new hope. >> it's like i'm happy to be alive every single day. >> the graduates will leave looking radically different, the key is feeling differently as well. for "nightline," i'm juju chang in ashville, north carolina. just ahead, mark zuckerberg lost from friends today. we'll tell you all about the facebook fumble. thanks for babysitting the kids, brittany. so how much do we owe you? that'll be $973.42. ya know, your rates and fees aren't exactly competitive. who do you think i am, quicken loans? [ spokesman ] when you refinance your mortgage with quicken loans, you'll find that our rates and fees are extremely competitive. because the last thing you want

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it has been quite a week for facebook ceo mark zuckerberg. he turned 28. his company was valued at $104 billion. he threw himself a surprise wedding and then to top it all off, he got sued. so what happens when your shareholders turn against you and your wall street debut turns into a very public mess? >> tell mark, we want to buy one

share. when last we left the hoodie empire known as the facebook ipo "nightline's" pursuit of a single share proved to be incredibly easy, all things considered. i'm hitting execute. and there we go. one order of fb at $40.82 and "nightline" is now a proud owner of facebook. woo hoo. but then like many fellow investors, we watched and wondered, what happened to the pop? you know, the sky rocketing profit many enjoy when a shiny new technology company comes to market? it turns out, just about anything that can go wrong with an ipo did. first the rush to buy in overwhelmed the computers and countless early investors had no way of getting trade confirmations. then after climbing a few bucks, facebook stock sputtered right back to near the original asking price of 38 bucks a share. monday and tuesday were even

worse as more early investors began dumping their new stock. now we know why. you see, at some point in the last few weeks, facebook told their bankers that they were having a bit of trouble selling as many mobile ads as they thought they could this quarter. the bankers noted this downgrade in the mountain of required paperwork, but they may have also emphasized this point to a few friendly calls to a few special clients. so the gazillion airs in the know went into friday looking to sell their overprized shares to amateurs who don't read fine print. >> one order of fb at 40 win $82. the stock kicked up to $32 today, but or roller coaster ride is nothing compared to that of zuckerberg. who made $19 billion on friday, got married to his long-time give on saturday, lost around $4 billion dli tuesday and today got hit with a couple

class-action lawsuits. darren robins is one of the lawyers suing facebook and morgan stanley. >> we have been contacted by hundreds of shareholders both institutions and individuals. they are very upset that their hard-earning savings and retirement money was invested while at the same time they were buying shares, others were being told fact which they were not provided. >> any time a stock goes down, you're hammered with lawsuits. people allege terrible things. >> harry runs the business insider website and points out that it was perfectly legal for facebook and morgan stanley to give their juiciest insight only to the big investment houses and not the little guy. >> the rules themselves are grossly unfair and it's time to change them. >> reporter: get this. that rule was set up in the boom and bust '90s by eliot spitzer, to stop analysts like henry into fooling investors into paying

too much for internet stocks, part of the same plea bargain that prohibits him from working on wall street again. >> reporter: there's a lot of people who want to look at the usual suspects and think there was something nefarious at work here. what's your instinct? >> i think everyone looks at wall street and says, they're out to screw the little guy. i worked on wall street for a long time. i was accused of screwing the little guy. i think people are trying to do the best job they can. >> so was it the law of unintended consequences that caused this debacle, too much greed all around? too soon to tell, but one thing is certain. you have a better shot of building a billion-dollar busy in your dorm than beating wall street at its own game. unless, that is, you're already rich. >> well, our thanks to bill. up next, the new american idol is philip philips. we catch up with past winners to

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well tonight guitar-strumming heartthrob philip philips became the 11 lth american idol to win the hearts

of fans nationwide. but after all the excitement dies down, what's next for tonight's big winner? well, some past idols have clipped their reality show days and become heavyweight chart toppers, whatever happened to the rest of them? here's abc's david wright. >> reporter: the crowning night on american idol. >> philip fill ipds! >> reporter: a moment for philip philips to savor for sure. when it comes to fame and fortune, carrie underwood, kelly clarkson, and jennifer hudson seem to be the exceptions. we set out to do a where are they now piece on past idol contestants. >> working at subway, working at hooters. we had someone addicted to cocaine. one contestant talks about how she got requests to sing at

funerals. before american idol, justin was performing on broadway in new york. now he's doing regional theater in atlanta. casey abrams is now a spokesperson for inflammatory bowel disease. julia dim ato was a hair dress ner connecticut before idol. post idol, she's back to cutting hair. san jaya stood out for his hair dos, he came in seventh. and now? >> now lives in an apartment working as a bartender, and sings karaoke songs. >> he hasn't let go of the dream altogether. today we found him writing songs for his new band, but it's a come down. >> an experience like american idol, you're so consumed by everything that's going on, you don't have time while it's happening to really process it. soon as you get cut, everything

hits you at once. >> reporter: a lot of contestants struggle. >> they bring you to a therapist to make sure your head is straight. when i went in, i felt like he expected me to be a little more upset, but i was pretty at peace with the decision. >> reporter: even the winners don't stay winners for long. ruben studdard won season two, but his legal troubles make headlines. lee dewise, his first album, sold 150,000 copies. the label immediately dropped him. does it feel like your 15 minutes of fame are counting down fast? >> initially it did. gosh, i got to go, go, go. >> reporter: david hernandez made it to the finals but got voted off after it came to light he used to support himself by stripping at dick's cabaret.

>> reporter: hopefully you're not back to stripping. >> wow. this guy over here, no, absolutely not. i was 22 years old, and it was a way of making an honest living. i don't regret anything. >> reporter: these days he's able able to make an honest living with music. >> singing is paying the bills. >> reporter: but from the heady days of american idol, he's now gone back to paying his dues. his advice to tonight's winner? >> have a good team in your corner. do things that will portray the artist you want to be. >> reporter: and maybe don't expect to be an overnight success. >> correct. >> reporter: win or lose on american idol, it's probably best to lang on to plan b. i'm david wright for "nightline" in los angeles. >> or even plan c. we hope you check in for "good morning america." we're online at