Commentary
Should the Dead Live On in Social Media?
- by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, December 3, 2010
The Internet has only been around, in a form accessible to the general population, about 30 years. In that time, the number of American Internet users increased from a mere two million in 1994 to an estimated 240 million in 2010, according to ComScore and Nielsen. Over the same period, over 35 million Americans died. Unsurprisingly, there has been growing overlap between the two groups (Internet users and the deceased) and it can be stated with utmost confidence that everyone in the first group will eventually end up in the second, at some point.
Yes, we're all going to die someday, and the simple fact of our universal, inescapable fate raises the question: What to do with the virtual affects of people after someone has died, including his or her "online presence" in the form of, say, a Facebook profile? The state of Oklahoma is blazing a legal trail, of sorts, with new legislation governing post mortem social media management. The new state law gives the executors or administrators of estates in Oklahoma the right to gain access to, administer or terminate the online social media accounts of the deceased.
Explaining the rationale behind the law, its sponsor, former state Rep. Ryan Kiesel stated: "The number of people who use Facebook today is almost equal to the population of the United States. When a person dies, someone needs to have legal access to their accounts to wrap up any unfinished business, close out the account if necessary or carry out specific instructions the deceased left in their will." Kiesel added: "Digital photo albums and e-mails are increasingly replacing their physical counterparts, and I encourage Oklahomans to think carefully about what they want to happen to these items when they pass away."
It's good that Oklahoma is taking steps to deal with an issue which will only grow as time goes on. But it still leaves some important choices to be made by Internet users and social network sites. Should people be able to say "leave my social profiles up" in their wills? And will social network sites respect these requests, or will they reject the legal liability (and cost) of hosting online profiles in perpetuity?
And what if someone doesn't dictate what to do with social media profile or profiles in his or her will? Should you take the profiles down, or leave them up as memorials? Anyway, what would it be like having dead people living on, in some form, on online social networks? Cool? Creepy? I'm picturing it being sort of like Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, where the dead form a constant background chorus (mostly peaceful, not scary/zombie-like) to the lives of the living. But then again, that was just a play -- do we really want that all the time?
Obviously it's up to the loved ones or designated executor to decide this, but I personally think we, as a society, should consider leaving up the profiles of the deceased. After all, the real world is filled with memorials and reminders of the dead (beginning with the coins in your pocket) so why not the Internet? I might even go one further and create an all-encompassing meta-social network for the deceased -- a virtual cemetery or afterlife populated solely by the profiles of the dead, aggregated from across the Web.
Regardless of how we choose to organize them, the profiles of the deceased could become valuable sources of information in the future. Descendants could add links explaining, say, family relationships for genealogical purposes, allowing children to trace their family histories online. For "important" people, you could even turn profiles into the hubs of user-generated content about the person, maybe through a Wikipedia mash-up; in the long term, the profiles of the dead would naturally become a source for historians, as well as virtual monuments and memorials to famous and accomplished people, where devotees could go to pay their respects and mingle with like-minded folk.
Erik Sass is editor of Publishers Daily. You can reach Erik at eriksass@gmail.com.
This poses a very interesting potential conflict between the social content creator and those who survive.
If we are to believe the Rev. Ernest Becker's premise in his Pulitzer Prize Winning (1974) "The Denial of Death" that we all seek to leave a legacy that proves we were here and we mattered, the Internet has provided a vehicle to allow EVERYONE to do that very thing.
In his book, Becker pointed out that artists, writers, musicians, performers and other creators of symbolic content were those best able to generate a lasting body of work.
The opening of Internet access via Netscape's first graphical browser in the Summer or 1994 has kicked access to both information and publishing into hyperdrive and now provides the ability to leave a digital legacy to an estimated 6,845,609,960 (as of June 1, 2010) individuals of all nations and cultures worldwide.
By its very digital nature, we have an infinite repository for the digital musings and works we create and leave in out mortal wake.
A mentor of mine loved to remind all that God wasn't making more dirt and that was his reason for investing in land. Despite the warning this past week we will run out of IP addresses by the end of 2011, I'm confident someone will figure out how to add another character or digit and the digital world will continue to expand and provide a place to continue sharing our thoughts and creative works.
A more reasoned approach to the Oklahoma proposal would be to treat the matter as most states require for organ donation or recognition of living wills. Each of us should make our personal wishes known to family and friends. I would suggest these wishes be incorporated into one's Last Will and Testament or through the creation of a Digital Viatical Document.
Ron Capps, PhD (aka Dr. Ron Capps the Nicheprof)
The Dead should live so long as they are grateful. Jerry lives.
NPR Tech did a story on this a while back that has links to various services to manage accounts post-mortem: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2009/05/your_digital_life_after_death.html
It's not just social media accounts, it's all the ways we have each other in our personal electronic resources and databases. In the past year I've lost two dear friends and have had to delete their contact information from my various directories. While I attended their memorial services, it somehow felt more permanent to hit the X and see the simple facts of cell phone numbers and email addresses vanish so that I could never again call or write.
One friend's Facebook page stayed up for a while and people wrote beautiful tributes. I just checked and it has been taken down; I imagine her family captured the comments but that's completely their decision.
@BarbChamberlain
Bizarre connections. I happen to be re-reading Don DeLillo's "White Noise" written in 1985. I put it down to check my email and stumble on this article. The juxtaposition of modern technology with the relentlessness of death. To think that "post mortem social media management" is a career opportunity is quite a lot to think about.
Thanks for the post - I hadn't heard about the developments in Oklahoma. I can see difficulties cropping up because online accounts are governed by their own Terms of Service agreements that expressly say that accounts are non-transferrable. Some services will automatically terminate accounts when the family advises them that their loved one has passed. Others have policies that categorically state that they will not turn access over to a family after death. Add to that the fact that TOS usually falls under California law (most large services are based there) and the jurisdiction of whether access could be legally compelled by an OK resident. Could access be granted by an international resident?
These are early days in the development of policies and precedents. I'll be posting a link to this article and discussion on my blog dedicated to this topic.
Adele McAlear
DeathAndDigitalLegacy.com