I went to lunch yesterday, and in the process I drove by a high school. I stopped at the traffic light while three high school students walked past on the crosswalk. And they were all lighting cigarettes. They looked to be 10th or 11th graders.

“What a waste” is the thing that went through my head. Here are three people where the tobacco companies won. Chances are that all three of these people are going to die young. And they will die a lot poorer after paying something like $2,000 per year feeding their new nicotine addictions.

Could Facebook help with this problem? Lots of teenagers use Facebook. What if Facebook added a status, like the relationship status, that lets a teenager announce, “I smoked my first cigarette today.” Lots of teenagers might use a status like that, and it would give friends and family a chance to intervene. Most people don’t become addicted on that first cigarette. Announcing it might give the educated part of the world a chance to prevent another addiction.

As soon as you think about that, other things come to mind. You could do the same kind of thing for alcohol, cocaine, meth, heroin, etc. Think of the boon this would be for researchers. They could mine through Facebook’s database and get really accurate statistics on when people begin using drugs.

There are all sorts of important life events that could be recorded through a new set of Facebook status changes. “I lost my virginity today” is one that comes to mind. When you check the box on Facebook, the database locks in the date and time. Lots of other “life events” like that come to mind:

• “I drove a car for the first time today.”
• “I graduated from high school today.”
• “I got arrested today.”
• “I cheated on my significant other today.”
• “I bought this book with title _____ today.”
• “I purchased a firearm today.”
• I bought a _____ today.
• “I met ____ today.”
• “Me and ____ got in a big argument today.”
• “I applied to _____ today.”

Yes you can put all this in little wall posts or tweets. But if Facebook gave you a formal way to do it, then Facebook could produce a really interesting timeline: “Your life, summarized.” This personal timeline would show all the important events in your life.

Facebook could give you a way to track your weight, your blood pressure, exercise patterns, foods eaten, etc. on a daily basis. Not everyone would use these features, but lots would. You could set statuses for the onset of disease. “I was diagnosed with diabetes today.” This might be a huge boon for the people watching their weight (essentially everyone in today’s society) , as well as for medical data mining. (Yes, this kind of stuff could be in the form of an app, but Facebook needs to provide the timeline feature in order to integrate the data feeds from all the apps.)

Several websites track your daily mood. Facebook could let you input your daily mood, ranging from “ecstatic” to “I’m thinking about committing suicide”. If the “suicide” indicator flips on and the “purchased a firearm” status is recent, maybe Facebook could help prevent a few suicides. A person could also look at their timeline to see how their mood changes over time. Maybe see some patterns.

What about this: Last year the Brain family moved. What a total pain in the neck changing all the addresses. When I went to vote this November, I had forgotten to inform the election board of my change of address, and I couldn’t vote normally. So when you move you set your Facebook status and enter your new address. It is now the responsibility of everyone who needs to know your address to take care of the problem for you, rather than you needing to send out 60 change of address forms.

In that same way, what if you could announce to the world that you are starting a search for a new car, a new house or a new HDTV. Companies could push information, coupons, offers to you. You would need a whole separate email system to handle the pile of stuff you would get, but having coupons/offers pushed to you might be nicer than having to look for coupons.

And what about classified ads, garage sales, etc. Criagslist owns this space right now, but the interface is pretty terrible. “Selling my stuff” is a pretty personal, and pretty social, thing that people do all the time. Facebook could take this over and make it a lot better.

Here’s the thing – Facebook is in the process of becoming ubiquitous. If it is going to be ubiquitous, why not make it a lot more interesting, and a lot more useful in real life? If Facebook had the same kind of tenacity that Google does for creating new things to make life better, Facebook could become a major force for good in society.

What would you like to see Facebook add?

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