Helping People Stay Connected Through Messenger

Messenger helps you feel together with the people you care about, even when you can’t be together. Right now, maintaining physical distance from others is critical to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Today, we’re launching the Messenger Coronavirus Community Hub with tips and resources to keep people connected to their friends, family, colleagues and community, and prevent the spread of misinformation. 

Being Together Even When We’re Apart

Being physically separated from the people you care about is hard. This is especially true in uncertain times. Messenger allows people to be with friends and family regardless of where they are or what device they’re using. Around the world, we’ve seen significant increases in people using Messenger for group calls to stay in touch with their loved ones. Globally, 70% more people are participating in group video calls and time spent on group video calls has doubled. 

Whether it’s a one-on-one conversation with a friend or a video call with your extended family, Messenger can help keep you connected to your support system and help get us through these challenging times. 

Supporting Your Communities

Our communities give us the strength we need to get through challenges and maintaining those bonds has become even more important today. The new resource hub offers tips for staying connected to your family, friends, faith community, classmates and coworkers as we practice physical distancing. 

For parents, this can mean scheduling a virtual play date with your kids’ friends, or connecting with their teachers or other parents for school updates. 

For local community leaders, this could mean organizing group video chats or text groups to support each other when we can’t physically be together. 

Connecting You to Healthcare Agencies

Finding accurate and reliable information can save lives. Our new hub provides tips to help people prevent the spread of misinformation. It also helps connect critical organizations like UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control with our developer partners who can help them use Messenger most effectively to share timely information and answer commonly asked questions about COVID-19 to ensure people get reliable updates from health authorities. 

Staying Safe from Scammers

Unfortunately, scammers may try to take advantage of people’s vulnerability and generosity during this time. We take your safety seriously and continue to take aggressive steps to remove fake accounts and catch scammers before they reach you. We’ve already heard of attempts to run treatment or fundraising scams online, and our new hub offers additional tips and resources to help people avoid online scams. You can also learn more by visiting our Privacy and Safety Hub.

As this global public health crisis evolves, our mission to connect people around the world could not be more important. We hope the hub can serve as a resource for people to help maintain their communities and social connections even when they can’t be together in-person.