Right now, more than 118,000 people in the U.S. need a new organ, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. One of the best ways to get new people to sign up for the donor list? Facebook. In May 2012, when Facebook added a new feature that allowed users to add their organ donor status on their timeline, 13,012 new people across the country signed up to be donors—in just one day, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Transplantation.
That’s about the number of people that could be expected to sign up in a three-week span during that time of year, according to the study. Pretty phenomenal, huh? Especially considering that just one organ donor can save up to eight lives, according to OrganDonor.gov.
Here’s how it works: When you add your donor status to your timeline, it shows up on your friends’ newsfeeds—just as with any other status update. (And in the event that you haven’t registered yet but want to, this feature also gives you a link to sign up to be an organ donor online.) So if you have a couple hundred Facebook friends and you update your organ donor status, your good deed starts trending (especially if your friends share your status)—encouraging others to follow suit.
To see what effect this has on donor registrations, researchers looked at data for the first 13 days the feature was available last May. While the dramatic increase in new donors did level off by the end of the period examined, a whopping 39,818 new donors signed up to be organ donors during the span. Plus, just 30 percent of Facebook users had the timeline at that point—which means the remaining 70 percent of people on the social network couldn’t yet use the organ donor update feature (but now can).
What more incentive do you need to list your donor status on Facebook? Oh, and while you’re at it, you might want to use social media to help spread the word about any other causes you’re involved in, too—because helping others is definitely something to “Like.”
More from Women’s Health:
3 Reasons to Give Blood
Donate: 3 Ways to Make a Difference
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