Abstract
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In a cave in southwestern France more than 50,000 years ago, a group of Neanderthals took great care to bury their departed companion to protect his body from scavengers. In Ancient Rome, relatives gathered to call on the deceased by name when a person died at home. In the late 19th century, the advent of the New Orleans jazz funeral brought mourners into the streets in the form of a parading funeral procession that celebrated the life and memory of their loved one.
Vastly separated by time, culture, and technology, these rituals of death and mourning have a common thread: they reflect the human need to grieve collectively, sharing in the memory of the deceased before saying final goodbyes.
Today, technology continues to change the way we mourn. Social networks such as Facebook allow us to grieve in new ways, both public and private, within communities that aren't limited to family members and close friends. Indeed, as we continue to make connections online—in the form of social networks, forums, followers on Twitter and Instagram, coworkers and acquaintances on LinkedIn, and more—we are building our legacies online and in real time. And once we pass, those legacies may remain online indefinitely, allowing others to mourn our memories in the same way that Ancient Romans once relied on lamentations to grieve over their relatives.
A recent study conducted by William Hobbs of the University of California, San Diego, and Facebook data scientist Moira Burke examined 770,000 individuals in Facebook networks in which someone had abruptly died during a 6-month period in 2011. Following the person's death, the study found that friends of the person who had died immediately increased interactions with each other and even maintained those interactions for as long as 2 years after the loss. 1
Notably, that increase in post-death interactions was more pronounced after cancer and unintentional injuries, rather than stigmatized deaths such as suicide and sexually transmitted disease. And perhaps unexpectedly, the study found the most striking jump in interactions among those between the ages of 18 and 24 years old.
As the similarities between ancient and modern mourning rituals reveal, death is both isolating and unifying. It forces us to deal with harsh emotions that can easily cripple us, but it also presents the opportunity to connect with others in intimate, vulnerable ways, such as offering memories of the deceased and celebrating the life they once lived. To people who are used to sharing and expressing themselves online, it logically follows that interactions among those affected by a person's death would increase—while people once would have gathered together in the form of wakes and memorials, social networks have enabled people to mourn collectively, even while remaining separated by physical distance.
To that end, social networks such as Facebook have even encouraged this form of interaction by offering easy ways to share links to obituaries and fundraisers in memory of the deceased, photos and videos that celebrate one's life, and event information for memorial services. Additionally, Facebook allows people to memorialize social profiles after a person has passed away; depending on the person's privacy settings, friends and family can continue to share memories on their loved one's timeline.
While Hobbs and Burke's study reflects the changing nature of collective grieving, there is much to be said about the relationship between online legacies and private mourning. Not long ago, mourners were once limited to physical reminders of their departed loved one: funeral plots, photographs, urns, belongings. Today, those outside a person's immediate family can mourn online, scrolling through a loved one's Instagram photos and Twitter timelines. In a way, this form of private mourning can feel even more intimate—through social networks and online legacies, we are seeing what our loved ones individually chose to express about themselves. We aren't reading obituaries written by strangers or cliché messages in pre-filled sympathy cards. We are looking at the lives of our loved ones as they wanted to be seen online. Perhaps that level of closeness makes it easier to celebrate the life they once lived.
At the very least, Hobbs and Burke's study reveals that young people—digital natives, people who grew up with the means and interest to express themselves online—are able to form new bonds more fluidly as they grapple with the unique cocktail of emotions that arise from someone's death. As Matthew Hutson notes in Science, “Older people and mourners of a stigmatized death might need more encouragement to reach out.” 2 These groups may not see any immediate benefit in sharing themselves online after the death of a loved one. But in more ways than one, sharing memories with others and looking back on a person's online legacy reflect the natural evolution of collective grieving.
Saying goodbye is difficult to do, and death is never easy. But when we consider the legacies we leave behind online, it's possible that something as simple as our social networks can help our loved ones celebrate our lives long after we are gone. After all, even though these online legacies are part of the changing landscape of the digital age, they have ancient roots in one very human need: to be part of a sharing community.