I woke up that morning not expecting to learn that a classmate had died after fighting cancer for almost 3 months. I also did not except to hear this tragic news through Facebook. My classmate’s name was Brittney, and even though we were not best friends, I was close to her. She was diagnosed with cancer months before her death, but I was still shocked to discover she was no longer with us. In the days that followed her death, I noticed on my Facebook’s newsfeed that many of her close friends wrote on her wall, offering passages and stories about how Brittney will be missed. It was nice to read all the comments that people posted and I felt a sense of comfort visiting her Facebook page as if she had never passed away. Even though Brittney was no longer with us, her Facebook page lives on.
A New York Times Article, Things to do in Cyberspace when you’re Dead mentioned, “Finding Solace in a Twitter feed may sound odd, but the idea that Tonnies’s friends would revisit and preserve such digital artifacts isn’t so different from keeping postcards or other physical ephemera of a deceased friend or loved one.”
A lot of Brittney’s friends, including myself, used Facebook as a mechanism to help with the grieving process. Brittney’s Facebook page made people feel as if she was still alive because everything on her page was just how she left it. Her profile picture was the same, her statuses remained, and nowhere on the page did it announce she was dead. Just as people found peace in looking through Tonnies’s Tweets after he died, people did the same with Brittney’s Facebook page.
The question is how immortal are our digital lives? Is it someone’s responsibility to delete a Facebook account after that person dies? Who is responsible for doing that? If Brittney did not leave the password to her Facebook account, will Facebook provide her parents with that information? These questions are being asked more and more often with so many people now having a digital life. According to "Things to do in Cyberspace when you’re Dead", there are many “digital-estate-management services” that will manage a will, which includes passwords of different online accounts and who has access to them after one dies.
For Brittney’s case, I believe her Facebook page should remain accessible for her friends to visit and write on her wall when they miss her. Even though this enduring digital identity is not completely real, it is the closest humans have come to becoming immortal.
4 comments:
Nowadays, information spreads like wildfire through online social networks. This information includes the good and the bad and updates us on people going through all stages of life, including death, so it is no wonder that a person’s death is announced through social networks. Online news articles are already threatening printed news articles, so why wouldn’t obituaries be taking the same turn? I think that by remembering a person through their Facebook account, people are also given the opportunity to mourn in a more private manner, mourn amongst others that loved the same person from all over the world, and mourn in a way that is publicly accessible. The one tragic part of remembering someone online is that it takes away from the personalization of being informed of that person’s death. Imagine someone finding out about his or her sister’s death from a bystander’s Facebook status. It is in cases such as these where online information spread becomes consequential.
I completely agree with your post and I think it hit on many interesting points. I was notified of a friend’s death through facebook about a year ago. I knew she had cancer, but it was chilling to log in and see "RIP Erin" Facebook statuses instead of receiving a phone call. Still, I found comfort when I visited her page and saw people posting memories and saying goodbye. I posted on her wall as well, and even though I knew she wouldn’t sit behind a computer and read it, it was comforting to be able to post it. Most funeral services and memorials serve the same function: they allow people to let go and find comfort. I don't think it’s a bad thing for someone to be able to do the same thing virtually.
Facebook accounts don't only benefit the grieving by allowing them access to their departed loved ones' memories. I had a friend whose sister was seriously injured and whose mother was killed by a drunk driver. He did (and still does) write things on her wall along with everyone in the community who loved her, as in your example. In addition to that, though, it seemed like everyone who knew his family (and even those who barely knew him but wanted to express their condolences) posted encouraging and supportive things on his wall. He thanked them all and said that having that extra online layer of support made him feel a little stronger and able to start dealing with what happened.
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