Facebook Stalking to a Green Lifestyle

It's 4pm in the afternoon and you just got home from school. Time to get on to Facebook and see what your friends have been posting on each others' walls about that awkward party the night before. While viewing the latest debauchery, you find something intriguing. You notice that one of your best friends creates a group entitled "We go big or go home." You join because maybe at the party you witnessed some hilarious collegiate insanities. Maybe you join just because your best friend invited you and you thought it was something sweet to have in your repertoire of group listings. Or perhaps you're quiet by nature, and maybe by joining you can project yourself to be someone with a slight edge to their character. More appealing to others you think. Lets say in a week you get a group e-mail from "We go big or go home" advertising a ridiculous theme party. Do you think that you are more likely to put yourself out there (meaning, you go crazy) at this new party due in some part to your newfound group association? You have to live up to it right? ...

Now consider this finding: Harvard medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis and UCSD political scientist James Fowler found by scavenging a social network of nearly 12,000 people in a Boston suburb that 67% of smokers who had a spouse who recently quit smoking, also quit smoking. If a friend quit, the chances of quitting increased by 36%.

What in the hell do these two random pieces of information have to do about sustainability? Simple. Social networks can change human behavior. While the green movement has seen little movement within social networks, there are various campaigns being waged to quickly form a social network of activism. But I believe popular networks are largely untapped. Is it possible that maybe one day we will be stalking friends' profiles to see how much they recycled the day before, or how much energy they saved by turning off the lights. Will we ever receive the same juicy feedback that may enable us to quit drinking our morning Starbucks out of those ubiquitous white cups and substitute a cheap reusable coffee mug instead? What will it take for conservation to be the new hit item of the Mini-Feed?