by Leigh Goessl

Created on: February 08, 2013   Last Updated: February 13, 2013

In 2013 Facebook has reached epic proportions with well over 1 billion members worldwide. Every day a significant percentage of the social network's membership base is checking in routinely, and for some people, far more often.

While many members make Facebook a part of their daily, or perhaps weekly, routine, for some people it causes problems such as addiction, poor time management and, in other cases, leads to life disruption. Over the past couple of years, many reports have surfaced in the media that describe ways people have gotten fired or arrested over various types of postings they have made on Facebook.

One 14-year-old Massachusetts teen decided she wanted to break the habit of Facebook. The deal is her dad will pay her an agreed upon amount of money, but her end of the deal requires she walk away from Facebook, completely for an agreed upon amount of time.

In a written agreement with her father, the teen agreed she will stay off Facebook for five months in exchange for $200.

The agreement, which the father posted on his business blog, says:

"I {girl's name} agree to deactivate my Facebook account from Feb. 4, 2013 to June 26, 2013. In return my dad {dad's name}, agrees to pay me $50 on Apr. 15, 2013 and $150 on June 26, 2013. He will have access to my Facebook to change the password and to deactivate the account. This will prevent me from re-activating the account in the future. I plan to use the money for the following purposes _____"

The space simply says "stuff".

According to the father, this initiative was his daughter's idea.

"It was her idea," he told the Daily Dot. "She wants to earn money and also finds Facebook a distraction and a waste of time sometimes. She plans to go back on after the 6 months is over".

Just this past week a survey released by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, found 61 percent of Facebook users had "taken a hiatus of at least several weeks", at least at one point or another during the course of membership.

This perhaps leads to questions on whether or not Facebook is beginning to reach its saturation point.  Are people beginning to consider the negative aspects of spending too much time on the network while "real life" passes them by?

Could be. As it stands Facebook's future is still looking pretty solid, however, as with any other Internet trend, things could change rapidly at any given time.

Note: The father originally posted the agreement in his blog, however, once the story got widespread attention on the media, he wrote an update to the original post that his daughter's name not be used.

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