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'Facebook Fairytales' Documents Kidney Donations Between Online Friends

by Caleb Johnson on April 11, 2010 at 10:30 AM

As it turns out, Facebook is good for something. According to The Wall Street Journal, Cathy Schroeder donated a kidney to a friend of a Facebook friend back in 2008 after she saw the woman's plea for help on the social networking site. It's amazing that Schroeder would give an organ to Beth Abramowitz just because she read it on Facebook, especially since the two women had never met. But Emily Liebert, who recently wrote a book about this phenomenon called 'Facebook Fairytales,' says sites like this have totally changed how people interact. "Even if you're not directly connected to the person, you feel connected to them through someone else," Liebert told the Journal.

Before you scoff, we're well aware that people anonymously donate organs. The Journal reports that there were 141 anonymous kidney donations and 1,311 donations to non-relatives just last year. But these Facebook donations are different, and part of a larger impetus between Facebook friends. Before the donor and recipient ever meet in the operating room, they feel like they know each other through photos, status updates and other information posted on an online profile.

In other words, people feel a sense of knowing and trusting a person through Facebook. That might not always be wise, but when it leads to stories like this and and similar ones, Facebook friendships have just as much meaning as real-world relationships. [From: The Wall Street Journal]

Tags: donation, facebook, health, kidney, OrganDonation, SocialNetworking, top, web

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