Digital Death: Mortality and Beyond in the Online Age: Mortality and Beyond in the Online Age

First, a third party can delete the account, either independently if she or he has the password or by requesting that Facebook remove the account, a process that requires proof, such as a death certificate and evidence of the requestor’s immediate relationship to the deceased.

A confluence of factors contributes to Facebook becoming the default destination for many to express grief and remember the deceased. First, it delocalizes the deceased’s final resting place so relatives and friends unable to travel for whatever reason are not precluded from having a place to direct their grief.

was, in fact, there, participating, or watching. As many friends comment, ‘Wish you were here, but I know you’re in heaven watching’”

again revealing the extent to which social media platforms, and Twitter, in particular, are changing the hierarchical nature of who should find out about the death first.

The Living Headstone, for example, attaches or engraves a QR code to a headstone, which is then readable by smartphone and connected to a unique, personalized online memorial page. This digital space is “similar to a personal Facebook page,” where, a “Living Headstone” archive site contains information you and friends can add about your loved one,

.]. By memorializing the account of someone who has passed away, people will no longer see that person appear in their Suggestions [. . .]. As time passes, the sting of losing someone you care about also fades but it never goes away. I still visit my [deceased] friend’s memorialized profile to remember the good times we had and share them with our

A Facebook profile can function as a space for mourning, which is broadly defined as any outward expression of grief.5 It can also become a memorial object created, whether purposefully or accidentally, as an act of memory preservation.

Likewise, unlike a cemetery, a virtual memorial is accessible via online connectivity at all hours of the day and night.

but I prefer the term nondigital to real because digital and virtual objects are real, in that they exist in physical space, and engaging with them is a material experience.

A deceased person’s profile therefore offers visitors a venue for “continued conversation” with the deceased as they “integrat[e] their mourning practices directly into their ongoing social relationships.”