Death in the Age of Social Media

Forbes, July 2013

ARTICLE:

On my personal facebook, there are three friends or family members that are no longer living, but their social media presence is still there. I'll occasionally look through their photos, or see the happy memories and pained messages left on their walls over the months or years. Last year, 3 million facebook users died, leaving 580,000 accounts in the United States existing as something of makeshift digital shrines. Death makes it presence on social media in other ways, as well; when Steve Jobs died, social media exploded with grief and thoughts, and most recently, NPR's Scott Simon live tweeted his mothers passing. Death is something we traditionally don't talk about much in American society; we expect people to dust themselves off and move on, and we generally avoid talking about our own mortality. But in a world where we are eager to connect and share all details of our lives, death is now moving into the social conversation. Grief therapist Lisa Leonard believes social media softens the blow of grief, and gives people more tangible memories to pull from in the process of saying goodbye. While there is no hard research on the topic, it does make me wonder how it will change the way we grieve, our roles in comforting and coping with death, and even how we perceive death as a whole.

SITE: http://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2013/07/30/death-in-the-age-of-social-media/