Not only is Facebook a great way to procrastinate, it might help change the world. Recent studies have shown that virtual worlds sway real-life choices. If you apply that science to Facebook, all of us believe that we have over 500 friends, care about countless “causes” and really can save the world from global warming by sending a little green plant.  

Past studies have found that video games and virtual reality can sway our emotions, help treat post-traumatic stress disorder and even trigger the same biological pathways as food and cocaine. A recent study at Cambridge University found that a video game could train conditioned responses that underlie much of our behavior.  

The New Scientist quotes neuroscientist Deborah Talmi as saying that “many virtual things activate very real representations in the brain. For instance, online donations to charities activate the same reward centre –– the nucleus accumbens –– that is activated to food reward in rats.”  

Facebook uses this natural desire to contribute to turn itself into worldwide tip jar for countless NGOs in a far more efficient manner.

Of course, most people don’t use Facebook to donate to their favorite causes. And no, not everyone who accepts a Lil’ Green Patch request will go plant a tree, if anyone. Nor have all hundred of thousand “Save Darfur” group-members written to their representatives demanding “urgent action.”  

Most people only belong to causes because someone invited them and they don’t care enough to say no. The non-profit organizations that start these groups should be just fine with this, though, because of cognitive dissonance.  

Cognitive Dissonance, essentially, is the theory that if you find your recent actions inconsistent with your beliefs, you are more likely to change your beliefs than condemn your actions.  

So if your friend gets you, an apathetic non-recycler and casual hater of spotted owls, to join two or three environmental groups, even if only out of peer pressure, you will likely come to see yourself as a supporter of these movements over time just because it makes you feel consistent. Then you are not only more likely to support Obama’s green-jobs package when it comes into the sphere of public debate, you are likely to insist that you always would have supported it. So with a couple “meaningless” clicks, Greenpeace just gained a new “lifelong supporter.”

That is better advertising than Greenpeace can buy.