CEO fought Facebook addiction with slaps! Elon Musk reacts

Addiction to social media is an issue for many, and despite some smart technological solutions to aid, not all of them are often effective. This is what Pavlok CEO faced back in 2012, when Facebook was one of the most happening places to be. Hence, he took an unorthodox approach to curb his Facebook addiction – slaps!

Yes, you read it right. Sethi went on Craigslist and hired a woman for $8 per hour. Her only job? To slap Sethi every time he drifted into the clutches of Facebook during his work hours! What might have been a painful experience, Sethi ended up boosting his productivity up to 98 percent.

Slaps aid CEO's Facebook addiction

Sethi shared his experience on Twitter and soon after, there was Elon Musk in the comments with his reaction. Musk's two “fire emojis” may have meant “lit” in today's lingo, but those instead led Sethi to ponder, “I'm the guy in this picture. Is @elonmusk giving me two emojis the highest I'll ever reach? Is this my icarus flying too close to the sun moment? Was that implied by the fire symbols elon posted? Time will tell."

The slap treatment did help Sethi set up Pavlok, a wearable company that creates gadgets to help bring change in daily habits. “I founded a wearable device company to change habits based on this experiment. @pavlok. Wearable device that delivers an electric zap and positive sensations to reward good habits and break bad ones,” he added in the post.

While Sethi's method may be harsh for many, and expensive, there are easier and more dignified ways to restrain your addiction to social media.

On your smartphones, you can rely on Digital Wellbeing (on Android), or Focus modes (on iPhones) to curb your social media addiction. You can download separate apps to put a time limit on your app usage.

And best of all, you can simply ditch using your smartphone and drop down to a dumb feature phone that does not support internet connectivity and apps.