Opinion: Some Post-Election Ideas for Facebook Nagging

(Nov. 2) -- This morning, as I do most election days, I ambled over to a local church and cast my vote. As a right-leaning voter in Manhattan, all this exercise of my civic duty seems to do is get me jury duty from time to time, so I'm occasionally tempted to skip it. But this year, I had an added incentive: Facebook nagging.

Yes, Facebook, that great time-suck/social networking site, has been running a counter touting how many of your Facebook friends have voted. Social network theorists have long known that "when you decide to vote it also increases the chance that your friends, family and co-workers will vote," as Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler write in their 2009 book, "Connected."

In the old days, this worked because your co-workers saw you go the polls on your lunch break, or you asked your neighbors or relatives directly if they voted. But these days, technology makes the social pressure much easier. Just by updating my Facebook status -- something I am inclined to do to report what I ate for breakfast -- I have subtly shared my virtue with (and hence, nagged) hundreds of people to get themselves to the polls.

It's a wonderful idea. Indeed, I can't help but think of all the other activities that we should do (but often don't) that could benefit from similar pressure.

Last spring, a Census counter informing me how many of my friends had mailed in their forms might have shaved a few days off my turn-around time.
I might be eating less of my children's Halloween candy if a counter informed me how many of my friends had been to the dentist in the past six months.
Likewise, we all know that we should be saving for retirement but, when it comes to paying the bills, that seems like a long time from now. Perhaps a one-day check in where we could all declare that we'd made a deposit for 2010 in our 401(k)s would up the savings rate a bit.

Of course, this could descend into absurdity. When I mentioned this idea of benevolent Facebook nagging on Facebook (natch), one friend suggested a banner reading "32 of your friends checked their tire pressure. Click the 'I Checked' button to tell your friends you checked your tire pressure."

And yet, as social scientists and policy makers keep learning, there aren't a whole lot of good ways to get adults to do things they don't want to do. The entire field of "choice architecture" is based on structuring the world to make good decisions easier -- think putting apples at children's eye level in the cafeteria line.

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If we feel anonymous, though, it's quite easy to forge right on with the bad ones. At least that's my take-away from watching people here in New York walk right past the green cart selling fruit into the McDonald's across the street, taking those signs noting the 1,000 calories in a meal in stride.

If we could give ourselves a gold star for eating five servings of fruits and vegetables by telling all our friends about it, though, maybe we would be more likely to do it.

So kudos to Facebook for putting its addictive news feed to good use. In the time it took me to write this post, 13 more of my friends reported voting -- which makes me feel a lot better that I took the time to do so as well.