Facebook Organ Donation: Do You Like Your Friends Enough To Save Them?

Facebook Organ Donation: Do You Like Your Friends Enough To Save Them?

From today, you can share whether or not you're an organ donor with a note on your Facebook timeline.

Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement in a post on ABC News: "Starting today, you can add that you're an organ donor to your timeline, and share your story about when, where or why you decided to become a donor. If you're not already registered with your state or national registry and want to be, you'll find a link to the official donor registry there as well."

The new status update works much like making any other life announcement on Facebook. In the same field as you write your status, choose the dropdown option for 'life event', and then choose 'organ donation'.

To register for organ donation, Facebook users should click through to NHSBT's Facebook page at to make our Facebook status an official organ donor registration.

Zuckerberg writes: "Facebook's mission is simple: to make the world more open and connected. But the Facebook community has also shown us that simply through sharing and connecting, the world gets smaller and better. Even one individual can have an outsized impact on the challenges facing another, and on the world. At Facebook, we call that the power of friends."

Sally Johnson, NHS Blood and Transplant's director of organ donation and transplantation, said: "We need more people to sign up to the register and share their wishes with their friends and family, our job is to make that as quick and easy as possible. This is an exciting new way to use the power of social media to reach a huge audience and encourage people to think about it, act, and share that information."

The intentions are good, but is there such a thing as too much information? Would you share your donor status on Facebook? How much does Facebook need to know about its users?

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