Of Facebook And Mortality

Unfortunately, many people with whom I am connected on Facebook have recently gone through a lot of losses. Friends and family members have left this plane of existence, but much of the time their Facebook pages remain. In many cases I have seen a person’s Facebook page become a sort of memorial.

What strikes me every single time though is that people quite often leave posts on the departed’s wall addressing that person directly. “I wish I had gotten to see you one more time.” “Now you’re finally getting the rest you so well deserve.” Some people even leave more personal messages there, as if they are standing with the person they miss in an empty room. They are getting one last chance, it seems they feel, to say everything they ever wanted to say.

It is odd how comfortable we are becoming with this new way of dealing with death, but it also is raising a lot of questions that we have never had to think about before. For example, do we want our social media selves to live on after we have passed? Some people you leave behind may find it very comforting to see your face in their online world, but others find it very difficult. Do you know which camp your family and friends are in? Do you have preferences as to how your social media accounts should be handled?

Having conversations like this with loved ones is seldom easy and never fun, but just as it is important to express your wishes about whether you want to be an organ donor, you now must consider your entire online existence and what will become of it when you are no longer here.

Even beyond all of this grim mortality talk, the use of Facebook pages as an ongoing memorial raises another question. If we continue to talk to people who have passed, are we talking to people who are still living with the understanding that they are there, living and breathing and ready to respond? The great excitement about social media is that it would connect us all more, and perhaps it has, but I fear it has connected us as sort of new creatures of existence, not really living and not really robotic. In the offline world we would not, probably, talk to our deceased loved ones in front of other people, but online it is completely embraced. What does this say about how we are relating to people online? Perhaps it means that while we are communicating with those avatars we see, we are not really waiting for or expecting a response, regardless of whether that person is capable of giving us a response in the first place.

These are all heavy questions, of course, and there probably is not any one single answer. But I think these issues, and issues related to them, are worth pondering and certainly worth discussing.

Where do you weigh in on these issues?

Of Facebook And Mortality