It’s been established that much like cigarettes, coffee, drugs, alcohol, and anything fun, Facebook can be addictive. Now there’s a new site that could help with your social network dependence.
FAddict is the brainchild of Dynamatik, the development team of Faisal Abid and Charlie Mclean that helps early-stage startups get to market faster.
The premise of the site is simple: Give them $5 and deactivate your Facebook account. For the next 30 days, FAddict will randomly check to ensure that your account is not activating by using your profile’s URL. If during those 30 days, they catch you stalking your ex-girlfriend or whatever it is that you do on Facebook, you forfeit your money, which will be donated to Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
If losing $5 isn’t enough of a motivating factor to get you to temporarily quit Facebook, then perhaps a little public shaming might do the trick. FAddict publishes the names of those currently taking the challenge on its front page, as well as those who’ve successfully gone 30 days without logging on to Facebook, and those that didn’t make it.
The idea for FAddict stemmed from a late-night conversation between Abid and Mclean at the Dynamatik offices.
“We wanted to see if we could actually build something usable in 3 hours flat,” Abid told the Daily Dot via email. “You can go from an idea to a real website in less time than it takes you to drive to work.”
The duo initially considered setting the financial cost at $20, something that, according to Abid, “would really let them feel the burn if they lost.” Instead, they chose to go with the cheaper price point.
“It seemed like a great way to quickly generate some money for charity,” he explains.
As of right now, no one has completed or failed the 30-day challenge.
Photo via Nate Bold/Flickr