Facebook Rolls Out ‘I Prayed’ Button for Users of Faith

Save a prayer for Mark Zuckerberg, because Facebook has rolled out a new prayer-request feature.

The feature, spotted by multiple outlets over the past weekend, allows users to create a prayer post in Facebook Groups; other users are then able to click an “I prayed” button (just like the site’s famous “like” button), share a comment or send a private message.

Facebook’s prayer button was first tested last December and comes as the social network says its seen more users turn to social media for their spiritual needs during the pandemic.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic we’ve seen many faith and spirituality communities using our services to connect, so we’re starting to explore new tools to support them,” a Facebook spokesperson told the Associated Press.

Facebook’s new feature also comes after Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, has said he’s looking to build the “metaverse.” The metaverse, as The Verge recently explained, was first “coined in Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson’s 1992 sci-fi novel, the term refers to a convergence of physical, augmented, and virtual reality in a shared online space.”

As Zuckerberg recently explained: “You can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it. And you feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or webpage, like dancing, for example, or different types of fitness.”

And based off Facebook’s latest feature, it looks like Zuckerberg and Co. want its users to move more and more of what they do offline to the social network — even if that’s asking God for a little help.