Jessica Cole reveals death in social media

Hours, days, weeks or even years after going through the heart wrenching ordeal of saying goodbye to your loved one for the last time. 

It’s a hair raising consideration, but it is also 100 percent possible.

With the emergence of the internet having become an integral part of people's communicative practices in the 90s, online memorials have slowly become more commonplace. 

Social media in particular has become the playing field for both communicating news of a death and memorialising the deceased for a significant period of time. A sure enough shift from the traditional forms of memorial such as eulogies, wakes, epitaphs and obituaries. 

If you think about it, or if you have experienced it, social media can be extremely dangerous in its unknown void in the narcissistic, self-esteem movement. 

In some respects it has allowed for death to make its way back into conversation. Most of the time when people are using the internet as a memorial they are alone in a secluded place posting to the world, yet strangely there is something uniquely comforting in the act. 

Similarly it leans on a shaky ethical ground with our culture's growing enthusiasm for sharing personal information.

What does it mean for the bereaved to be able to engage with a deceased person’s social media profile? Better still, what if that profile began responding back? 

There are now a vast array of digital death and afterlife online services readily available.  

These services come in all flavours including digital estate services, posthumous email services and online memorials.

These allow you to plan, organise and store everything, from what happens to your social media accounts after you die, to planning your funeral, leaving messages for loved ones and setting up a bucket list.

You allow trustees to access your account after your death, so they can inform friends and family about all the important information and answers you have left behind.

Imagine in a state of bereavement receiving a message similar to, “Everything will be ok, I am watching over you.” - Like something out of a Stephen King novel. 

Perhaps it’s me, but this feels like a macabre and harmful form of memorial; like a defunct death. 

What is the procedure of grief for death when we are thrown such conundrums in the social media age? Are we able to successfully move through the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance?

The deceased social media account is not necessarily terminated, in most cases their online social presence lives on. People can still post to it and the deceased might still appear in their friends news feed.

Perhaps even if you can deal with grief in the age of social media, one interesting prospect is that as the number of social media users pass away, Facebook will eventually become more like a cemetery, shifting it from a form of networking to a lineage of genealogy.