Your Digital Legacy, Memorialized

Almost a decade ago, Facebook began allowing deceased users’ pages to be memorialized. For the pages, this meant that no new updates could be made, but friends and family could still create posts in remembrance of the user. The pages are also removed from public directories and the “People You May Know” feature. In the time since, many of us have seen memorialized pages for old friends, or come across news stories about them after tragic incidents.
Any user today can go into her settings and choose whether or not she wants her Facebook account deleted or memorialized after her death. Twitter, on the other hand, will just delete the account. Same with Pinterest and LinkedIn. Instagram will allow accounts to be memorialized when requested, otherwise they are deactivated.
All of these options require a family member reaching out to the services and informing them of the user’s death. Sometimes they do, in order to post touching messages and sometimes just to stop receiving painful birthday reminders. Many times they don’t, and the profile lives on with no new posts or updates. Hachem Sadikki, a statistician with the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, has projected that dead users on Facebook will outnumber the living by 2098. The largest population of social media users belongs to the younger generations and when they pass, the next set will likely have moved on to other platforms. Figuring out what to do with these digital remains is a question that should be asked sooner rather than later.
So is one choice better than the other? Is memorializing our pages an act of kindness, or one last “look at me please” post to satisfy the need to be watched even after we’re gone? The answer probably lies in the individual and the relationships he kept.
Brandon Ambrosino, in his piece Facebook is a Growing and Unstoppable Digital Graveyard written for BBC Future, shared mixed and bittersweet feelings on viewing the active (non-memorialized) profile of his aunt who had passed. Meditating further, he wrote that we “might think of our public social media record as some type of digital soul: those perusing my Facebook know my religious beliefs, my political reservations, my love for my partner, my literary tastes. Were I to die tomorrow, my digital soul would continue to exist.” He wondered at the ways our grandchildren will get to know us through our digital legacy, how our immediate family can hold on to our words exactly as they were written, and what it means for the grieving process.
For those of us who want to treat our digital legacy with the same forethought we would with our estate (and why wouldn’t we), The Digital Beyond maintains a list of services we can use to make plans for our digital information. It may be useful if you want to prevent a Black Mirror scenario. (You remember the episode with Dohmnall Gleeson as an android with artificial intelligence, subbing in for the dead boyfriend? YIKES.) On that list, Dead Social has gotten some press, and interestingly enough has enrollment periods―just like your health insurance.
The rest of us probably won’t give this too much thought. It might feel antithetical to the moment of now that characterizes much of social media, and I suppose that’s okay too. The world changes, and our behaviors along with it. It may feel comfortable, after a while, to share your digital world with everyone who came before.
