Facebook boasts some 1.1 billion users around the world. But the juggernaut social networking site has also inspired some less than flattering headlines the last few years as well. Articles with titles like “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely” and, “How is Facebook Addiction Affecting Our Minds?” So it’s nice every now and then to stumble upon a story that shows how Facebook is also making a positive difference in people’s lives.
I came across just such a story earlier this week. In a nutshell, it seems as if Facebook is spurring many more people than normal to sign up for organ donation.
On May 1, 2012, Facebook added a feature that enabled people to show their organ donation status on their profile’s timeline. Nearly 60,000 people did so on that day alone. In addition, 13,012 folks in 44 states signed up for the first time to be organ donors. That’s compared to 616 people who typically do so on a normal day— a 2,100% jump. That spiked dropped a bit in the weeks following the announcement, but still stayed above the baseline, according to a recently published report in the American Journal of Transplantation.
Dr. Andrew MacGregor Cameron, surgical director of liver transplants at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the study, told NBC News, “To me, it was a promissory note on the power of social media.” In a separate interview with Slate, Cameron added, “If you poll the public, as Gallup did in 2005, you will get 95% of Americans saying they support donations. Yet only about 45% have signed up. There’s some obstacle, some barrier, that prevents people from doing it. Having it be on Facebook makes it easier for people—it allows them to do the right thing.”
Social media in particular and entertainment media in general regularly get linked to troubling outcomes in society. But mixed in amid those stories are moments like this one, moments in which we’re prompted to remember that these deeply influential media can prompt people to “do the right thing” too.
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