Friday, 13 June 2014
LIFE | What should happen to your social media sites after you die?
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| SELFIE: The late Peaches Geldof was quite partial to an Instagram snap but her account is now defunct. |
Within a couple of days of Peaches Geldof's sudden death, the Instagram account for which she had become renown for sharing hundreds of photos of her beautiful babies was closed down. Although it hasn't been officially confirmed that it was on the request of her family, at the time Instagram did tell metro.co.uk:
‘When a person passes away, we do honour requests from close family members to deactivate their Instagram account, which removes the profile and associated information from the site.’
It made me wonder; what should happen to your social media websites when you leave this world for the next? The internet is a MASSIVE part of our everyday social lives now and statistics predict that 100 years from now there will be around 845 million Facebook accounts of dead people.
Randall Munroe of 'What If' predicts that between the 2060s and 2130s, the amount of dead Facebook profiles will begin to outweigh the amount of 'live' users.
'Based on the site's growth rate, and the age breakdown of their users over time, there are probably 10 to 20 million people who created Facebook profiles who have since died.... About 290,000 US Facebook users will die (or have died) in 2013. The worldwide total for 2013 is likely several million. In just seven years, this death rate will double, and in seven more years it will double again. Even if Facebook closes registration tomorrow, the number of deaths per year will continue to grow for many decades, as the generation who was in college between 2000 and 2020 grows old.'
So what are your plans for your social media sites after death? Do you have any? Have you ever even thought about it? Or do you not care? For some they may like the idea they will leave an online legacy after they're gone, somewhere their loved ones can look back on if they wish to look at photos etc. etc. Some however may not like the thought of it all still being active long after they're not.
Maybe the question of what to do with your online profile will very soon be one asked when you are making your will, maybe it already is a question asked?
I was quite sad when I realised Peaches' Instagram had been made inactive simply because I really enjoyed seeing her photos. Instagram just isn't the same without her but I am a nobody and undoubtedly it's what her family wants that is important. What I did find morbid was noticing the amount of followers she quickly gained in the wake of her untimely passing as well as some of the comments. It makes total sense that her family decided to close it down. Fair enough, she was a public persona and the likes of you or I wouldn't receive the same type of following in life let alone in death but it does make me think twice about what I would actually want.
Really, I guess it is up to those I leave behind and how they feel about it all.
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| POIGNANT: Peaches last pic before her sudden death was that of her and late mother Paula Yates who died in 2000. |
*Photo Sources: Instagram
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