Facebook wants you to donate your organs Facebook By Rosa Golijan After successfully making the "relationship status" a significant issue in our lives, Facebook now brings attention (and peer pressure) to something else - our posthumous fate. On Tuesday, the social network announced that users may declare that they are registered organ donors by adding an "organ donor status" to their Timelines. While declaring your donor status on the social network isn't legally binding, Facebook hopes it will inspire people. Live Poll Will you declare your organ donor status on Facebook? Facebook's latest feature is an attempt to save lives by raising "broader awareness about organ donation," according to a press release signed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg. The two "believe that by simply telling people that you're an organ donor, the power of sharing and connection can play an important role." In an interview with ABC's Robin Roberts, Zuckerberg said his girlfriend, medical student Priscilla Chan, as well as his friendship with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (whose life may have been extended thanks to a liver transplant) inspired him to add the organ donor status feature to Facebook. While the plan might initially seem strange, it's quite clever once you think about it. Whether we love or hate Facebook, the social network plays a role in many of our lives. So when an issue is promoted on the site, we won't be able to escape it. Soon you'll notice the option to add your organ donation status when you edit your Timeline, you'll see your friends adding such statuses and you'll see links encouraging you to officially register as a donor. Odds are, you'll idly click on something and learn a bit about organ donation. You might even decide to become a donor yourself - and then update your Facebook status, of course - which will add to the overall promotion of the issue. If you are looking to add your organ donor status as soon as possible, here's what you have to do, according to Facebook's Help Center: Click Life Event at the top of your timeline 2. Select Health & Wellness 3. Select Organ Donor 4. Select your audience and click Save Just as you can hide your relationship status from some, most, or all people, you can also hide your organ donor status by editing your privacy settings. And just as you can set a fake relationship status, you could set a fake organ donor status as well - though I don't know why you would - without any apparent legal consequences. Declaring that you're married on Facebook doesn't make a marriage license materialize, and declaring that you're an organ donor won't make your kidneys vanish one day. Though family members could choose to take such a status to signify your final wishes, of course. Whether the awareness raised by Facebook (as well as the peer pressure it produces) will reduce the number of individuals who die while waiting for a transplant remains to be seen, but Dr. Andrew M. Cameron, the surgical director of liver transplantation at Johns Hopkins Hospital, sounded optimistic in an interview with the New York Times' Matt Richtel and Kevin Sack: "This is going to be an historic day in transplant," said Dr. Cameron, adding that people who die for want of an organ do so mostly because there are not enough organ donors, not because of any shortcomings in medical technology. The math will radically change, and we may well eliminate the problem. Dr. Cameron estimated that millions of people could shift their donation status overnight. Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.