How 1 Billion People Are Coping
With Death and Facebook
What's this?
“I think I’m going to go online,” said Cheryl, logging in to
Facebook from her hospital bed.
She soon reconsidered, however. “I don’t know what to write:
‘Hey I almost died last night. What’s up with you guys?’”
Months later, Cheryl died from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Her
partner Kelli Dunham still cherishes funny memories like this one. “She was
kind of a smart ass,” Dunham tells Mashable.
The two represent a phenomenon occurring the world over:
Facebook after death. Couples, families, colleagues and friends are not only
coping with losing loved ones, but also interacting with the Facebook profiles
they leave behind.
The situation surfaces a multitude of questions and
concerns. What happens to a Facebook profile after death? How do people
interact with a dead user? Should loved ones be able to access a dead user’s
profile at all? What is acceptable online grieving etiquette? And finally, what
has grief become in the age of social media?
As of 2012, 30 million people who maintained Facebook
accounts have died, according to a report by The Huffington Post. Some studies
approximate that nearly 3 million users have died in 2012 alone; 580,000 in the
U.S.
What Happens After We Die?
So what happens to all those suddenly abandoned profiles?
Their fate could go one of four ways:
- The profile remains untouched, unaccessed, unreported and therefore open to everyday wall posts, photo tags, status mentions and Facebook ads. In other words, business as usual.
- A family member or close friend may choose to report a death to Facebook. Upon receipt of proof of death, such as a death certificate or local obituary, Facebook will switch the dead user’s timeline to a “memorial page.”
- A close family member may petition Facebook to deactivate a dead user’s account.
- Users may gain access to a dead user’s profile in one of two ways: either through knowledge of the dead user’s password, a practice against Facebook’s terms of service, or through a court subpoena. However, per Facebook’s privacy policy and strict state law, courts rarely grant outside access to said social data. More on that later.
- Facebook’s official policy for handling user deaths is the memorial page. In 2009, the social network began switching dead users’ profiles to memorial statuses, should the deceased user’s friends or family request the change.
- Those friends may interact with the memorial page similarly as they would an active profile. They can post condolences and share memories on his or her timeline; they can view pictures and interact with past posts.
However, Facebook removes a host of other capabilities from
memorialized pages. For instance, the profile is no longer accessible via
public search, available only to existing Facebook friends. The page will not
appear within Facebook “Suggestions.” In other words, the algorithm won’t
suggest that you “reconnect with” a dead user whose page has been memorialized.
Users won’t be able to tag a memorialized Facebook user in future posts or
photos, or message that person at all. All automated app activity (e.g., Daily
Horoscope) associated with a memorialized Facebook page ceases. Finally,
Facebook reserves the right to delete status updates of a sensitive nature. For
instance, if a user who committed suicide posted a photo of a gun to his head,
Facebook would likely deem the content inappropriate and remove.
“Memorialization allows friends and family to post
remembrances and honor a deceased user’s memory, while protecting the account
and respecting the privacy of the deceased,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes
tells Mashable. “Also, we do honor requests from close family members to
deactivate the account, which removes the profile and associated information
from the site.”
Interfacing With the Dead
But most users don’t
raise a Facebook flag at all, choosing instead to peruse and interact with a
person’s regular Facebook presence even after his or her demise. And they have
all kinds of reasons to keep it that way.
Scott Millin lost his 45-year-old sister Nanci to breast
cancer in December 2011. As her caregiver and estate trustee, Millin made
practical arrangements before, during and after her death.
“My job was now to dismantle and disperse what was remaining
from Nanci’s life,” says Millin. “Canceling her phone service, credit cards,
trash service and email account were logical conclusions and decisions… The one
thing I struggled what to do with [was] her Facebook page.”
He not only saw Nanci’s timeline as a testament to her
accomplishments and memories, but as a curated tome of experiences she had
chosen to share from her otherwise private life.
“I think Nanci’s Facebook page is a virtual cemetery of
sorts for me, as well as for her friends and family,” he says. “Only we don’t
have to navigate winding roads and marble headstones to get there. Instead, we
just click from any device and see her, remember her, leave messages, and smile
or cry at what was and what has become.”
For many, Facebook
has become a highly accessible (even mobile) vehicle for grieving and,
ultimately, catharsis.
For many, Facebook has become a highly accessible (even mobile)
vehicle for grieving and, ultimately, catharsis.
Kristen Brown met well-respected musician Damien “Khamelien”
Rahim through mutual friend Chris Kirkpatrick. Over the years, Brown and Rahim
became close; the latter even wrote and produced the theme song for her
nine-year-old son’s YouTube storyboard (below).
In September 2012, however, Rahim was robbed and murdered in
an Orlando, Fla. parking lot. Since his Facebook was not memorialized, Rahim’s
friends still received notifications from his Facebook events many days after
his death.
After two months had passed, Brown showed a friend the
storyboard, bursting into tears upon hearing Brown’s voice. She had to leave
the room to compose herself. “That night I messaged Damien’s still active
profile on Facebook,” she says. “It gave me comfort to be able to say what I
needed to, even though he would never know.”
“Facebook very much helped in my time of grieving by making it so easy to connect with Damien’s family and other friends,” says Brown. “We bonded and shared our grief… It helped my kids grieve, as well.”
For others, reminders on social media of a loved one’s death
can be more painful than helpful. If a dead user’s timeline sits
un-memorialized, that profile can appear in Facebook Suggestions, such as the
“People You May Know” sidebar on the homepage. Their birthdays reappear year
after year in the news feed sidebar, prompting well-wishes from individuals
unaware of the death. Many profiles continue to surface in Sponsored Stories,
which promote users’ activity and likes from months and years past (e.g.,
“Kevin likes Wal-Mart”).
On the birthday following Cheryl’s death, Dunham noticed a
flood of wishes on her partner’s timeline. But rather than scrolling through a
stream of condolences, Dunham encountered what she initially interpreted as
insensitivity.
“[People] wrote birthday wishes that made it clear that they
had no idea she was dead. Stupid stuff like ‘Have a good time on your birthday,
Cheryl. You only live once.’ Really,” she says. “I started responding to all
these posts with just, ‘She’s dead,’ but since Cheryl had over a thousand
Facebook friends, this was not really a very good use of time. I also probably
hurt some people’s feelings.”
Excerpt from
