What happens to your Facebook when you die?
April 16th, 2008With the growth of online social media platforms, have you considered what happens to your online identities when you die?
It has been nearly a year since E.B. died. She was struck in a tragic car accident while abroad in England. We met at university in Kingston, Ontario, and worked together with Queen’s Players. She was a bright light who lived life to its fullest.
When she died, her sister signed in to her Facebook page to post the news on her wall. Her sister explained what had happened and linked to information about the funeral. Within hours, word spread across E.B.’s network of friends.
It had been 2 years since I graduated and moved to Montreal, so there was some distance between this community of friends from my past. The increasing speed of communication via the Internet has become something of a cliché. But in this instance, I witnessed how Facebook played such an active role as a structure for rapid communication.
A year later, E.B.’s page still exists, and it has become a kind of memorial. Her wall is a place where people come and leave her messages. There are over 200 messages since the accident. It is very touching to read and share. Her Facebook wall has become something of a sacred space.
I find the Facebook wall to be something of a voyeuristic experience. In this case, there may be comfort found by sharing the grieving with others in her community of friends.
E.B. popped back into my life recently with the implementation of Facebook’s “People You May Know” function. Facebook scans your network of mutual friends to suggest people who you may want to add as a friend. My girlfriend went to the same university and actually took classes with her. The Facebook algorithm suggested she might like to add E.B. as a friend. Eerie.
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Have you thought about what will happen to your virtual estates? Do your loved ones have access to your logins and passwords? I experienced first hand the power of social networks to bring together a community dealing with grief. And I am fascinated by how it can continue. I’ve decided to keep E.B. anonymous. I don’t know if Facebook would object to her profile remaining active. And just in case, I don’t want to be responsible for shattering this beautiful place.
If you have a lot of online connections, I can’t help but think it valuable to instruct a family member how to find the keys to your blogs and social networks.
What are your thoughts?
Posted in Ponderings | Comments (4)
April 21st, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Oy … I was thinking about this when we lost my friend in November. I know he was an avid gamer, and for nights on end I couldn’t stop thinking about all the ways he might have an online presence (email, personal pages, etc.) wherein his connections wouldn’t know what’d happened to him.
September 8th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Hi, I just found this page by googling ‘what happens when your facebook friend dies’. Anyway, in part of my search I also came across this info of memorializing a facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=deceased
If a person fills out the form, the page is left up so friends can still write on the wall (kind of like what’s been done already on EB’s page), but the basic info is removed (contact information, status updates, etc) Also the page can’t be found through search results and no new friend requests are accepted.
I know you wrote this post over a year ago – but I thought to pass on this info to you anyway incase you didn’t already know about it.
Cheers!
January 10th, 2011 at 12:53 am
[...] choose to remove his account, it will not be done but only memorialized. You can go through this article which illustrates the benefits of keeping your friend’s profile memorialized rather than being [...]
January 18th, 2011 at 12:26 pm
Sorry to hear about E.B.
I wondered if this website might be of interest ??
http://www.mydigitalexecutor.co.uk/
Regards, Chris.