Can Facebook Fix Bad Behaviors?

Facebook has persuasive powers, but can the social network curtail bad behaviors such as smoking? That's what researchers want to find out. A study in the most recent issue of Science magazine tries to figure out whether or not Facebook has the kind of power to help people change for the better.

Facebook has persuasive powers, but can the social network curtail bad behaviors such as smoking? That’s what researchers want to find out. A study in the most recent issue of Science magazine tries to figure out whether or not Facebook has the kind of power to help people change for the better.

It might sound Big Brother-like, but it’s more like helping good behavior go viral. Researchers are trying to “seed” good behavior and watch it spread.

The study’s author, Thomas Valente of the University of Southern California, explained to The Daily Beast how it might work:

If we’re able to scan all the photographs that somebody has up on their Facebook account, and we see that there are some friends that smoke and some that don’t, [then] we can figure out how to trigger communications across Facebook that say, “Look, you’re smoking and your friends don’t.

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