Mark Zuckerberg was my college classmate and so I think I'm the 1,100th person on Facebook.

That's Dr. Nina Vassen.

So I've been on since 2004 and looking at this research actually, I'm realizing that my

classmate tonight, where is that user group?

Nina is now a psychiatrist and professor at Stanford.

Long ago though, she was a very early Facebook user, which made her an inadvertent participant

in a recent study published by my other guest today.

My name is Alexei Makarin and I'm a seasoned professor in applied economics at MIT Sloan's

School of Management.

Some of Alexei's research focuses on the economics of media, specifically social media.

In 2020, he published a study that looked at whether the Russian social media platform

VK, fermented anti-government protests around the country in 2011.

Participation in protest was associated strongly with your social media use, but the cause

of the impact was still unclear and that's where we came in.

In that study, Alexei and his co-authors relied on the introduction of VK at its Founders

University as a randomizing device.

What we noticed is that VK was created in 2006 by a student of St. P. Z. Prostate University

and the first users of VK were students of that university at that particular time.

St. Petersburg State University attract students from all over Russia, more from some cities

than others.

And that suggested a natural experiment to Alexei and his colleagues.

So I'm from a very small town in Russia if I go from that particular hometown to study

...