Memento Mori: coming to terms with death online

Angeli, Cheng, and JR are all smiles in their Facebook avatars. Their families regularly post to their Walls, sharing their thoughts and feelings from day to day ("i love you soo much !!" Cheng's boyfriend shouts out) —except everyone knows that no replies are forthcoming. More and more, social media are helping people cope with the loss of loved ones in ways that are as profound as they are overwhelming. The same technology that enables us to share with the world our minutest thoughts and memories, no matter how seemingly insignificant, also enables us to reaffirm our bonds with loved ones and to show our support when it is needed the most. At the very least, during times of loss or suffering, social media are an additional way for us to share, and, hopefully, to release our grief. After all, letting go is always hard, especially when there are so many things —photographs, recordings, scribbles, thoughts, and memories— that remind us so much of what we've lost. And this is the crux of an increasing dilemma that confronts —and haunts— all of us who live in a Web 2.0 world: the more of ourselves we share online, the more of ourselves we leave behind. Bereavement in a participatory culture Thanatologist Dr. Carla J. Sofka, who has been studying the interplay of technology and death since the 1990s, says that social media enable their users to overcome feelings of powerlessness and to experience a sense of unity as a community of bereavement. According to Sofka, the digital world is a perfect example of a participatory culture in which there are relatively low barriers to civic engagement and there is strong support for creating and sharing one's creations with others. Members of such a culture feel some degree of social connection with each other, and members believe that their contributions matter even if they don't actively contribute, she adds. "I suppose when one is going through grief, he or she will look for solace in things that cheer him or her up —family, work, books, friends, ice cream— and if the Internet is one of those things, then yes, having an online profile might help. It has become a medium for expression. And for some, sharing one's grief online helps ease the burden a little bit. I know it helped me a bit when my Lolo passed away last year. Posting photos of his glory days and receiving comments from friends —it felt good sharing the good stuff, and remembering them with fondness," Facebook user Ian Roxas shared on our Facebook Wall. "Thorough social networking, you can easily express what you feel and it also helps in informing your friends (so) they can comfort you. You can reach people far from you and you're free to talk through it," added Karla Sol. "My sister, if miss ko sya, post lang ako ng message sa Facebook wall nya. Pati friends nya. I miss her so much," shared Redgem Adriano. "Pwede mong ilabas lahat ng saloobin mo... Posting my feelings on Facebook, Blogger, and Twitter helped a lot. Kasi nailabas ko lahat," said Patricia Marizz Dela Cruz. What about the online profiles of the deceased themselves? "In addition to using (online social networks) for documenting their experiences, thoughts, and feelings, members of (a social network) also have the option of using their personal page to commemorate someone who has died. If the personal page of the deceased is maintained after death, it is also possible to add material if the page is public or if they have been given access to private material on the site,"said Sofka in her essay, Adolescents, Technology, and the Internet: Coping With Loss in the Digital World. Such online memorials have existed at least since the late 1990s, in various forms on the World Wide Web. Just last year, Facebook institutionalized this practice when the social media giant introduced the capability to turn deceased loved ones' personal profiles into "memorial pages". However, herein lies the heart of the problem: what we share online is more than just a collection of photographs and words and recordings. What we leave behind are intimate extensions of our daily lives, cybernetic fragments of our consciousness caught in virtual amber. When we die, we leave behind all sorts of intimate information scattered across the Web, from photos and shoutouts to blog entries and email accounts. And because the World Wide Web (in general) and Social Media (in particular) are still evolving, it becomes that much harder for families to decide what to do with their loved ones' virtual remains. What to do with a loved one's virtual remains? Presuming the family is aware of the deceased's passwords, they can opt to either maintain their loved one's personal profile as a "shrine" or take it down, depending on how they feel about what's contained in the profile and how it's used. Otherwise, they can try to contact the administrators of the site to take appropriate action. Different sites may have different policies for dealing with such requests, or none at all. Fortunately, sites are generally very accommodating in that regard: in 2008, for example, Plurk.com granted one of its users, Hazel Danielle Santos, infinite karma after the 27-year-old Filipina died tragically in a road accident. In an online poll conducted by GMANews.TV, respondents were divided on whether online profiles should be deleted out of respect for the deceased; maintained but kep private for the sake of the family; or left untouched, just as the person left it before s/he died. As of June 10, the majority or 41 percent believed that the profile should be untouched. "People will remember you better if they have a visual reminder of how you lived your life. Leaving it untouched will ease the pain of those left behind. Communication, though one way, could be psychologically healing," said Maite Aragon-Casile. "Profiles of people who have passed away in any social networking should not be deleted or removed (permanently). it should be kept private for the sake of their love ones who still wants to remember and give respect to his memories. the profile status can be change in reference for any (future) verification but the rest of his profile should be left untouched. He may be dead but not forgotten," opined Joey Noblejas. On the other hand, quite a number of respondents were very pragmatic in their outlook: "Dead or alive, it's much better to conduct periodic clean-up of inactive accounts," noted Mac Romero. "It's social media. How can (the deceased have) social relevance, if they are dead? Better to update accounts if it's inactive for quite sometime," added Zaldy Lopez. The diversity of opinions on death in the context of social media is perhaps indicative of the continually evolving nature of the World Wide Web, because the technology has been advancing at a pace that's faster than our capacity to grasp it —or at least our ability to come to a generally acceptable agreement on how to use it. Re-thinking death and social media Earlier this year, the UK's The Daily Telegraph reported that a pair of teenage twins found out about the death of their brother, Bobby Vorlis, on Facebook. Friends of the siblings had been posting messages of sympathy and condolence long before the police were able to inform the family that the 17-year-old boy had died in an early morning car accident. "It's every parent's worst nightmare to lose a child, but to have to hear it on Facebook... is just horrifying," said Bobby's uncle. Bobby's death, though deeply tragic, was not uncommon. What made his case stand out, however, was the particular way in which social media played a part in its aftermath. It was certainly not the first time that someone had been commemorated online, but it was definitely one of the few reported cases in which a family had to deal with the entire experience of death from out of the framework of online social media. And this is precisely what took the online community aback: the realization that such an experience was unprecedentedly incomprehensible, let alone possible. The Web seemed to be the last place, on everyone's mind, in which to deal with the topic of death in its entirety. "While everyone has now come to expect that social networks have become the most immediate and regular ways in which many people communicate, there are some experiences that no-one ever imagined would play out through sites like Facebook," noted technology pundit Chris Matyszczyk on his CNET blog. Learning to come to terms Not too many people realize the implications of the fact that the World Wide Web as we know it is barely a generation old. Tim Berners-Lee coined the term just twenty years ago in 1990, and many of the things we have come to associate with the Web are still adolescents in comparison: Yahoo is just 16 years old, and Google is only 14. Even younger still are the Web 2.0 applications that are now practically an indispensable part of our online lives: Facebook and Twitter are no more than six and four years old, barely out of swaddling clothes. What this means, for the rest of us, is that we are still grappling with just how much these social media are changing how we make sense of life —and, sooner or later, how we come to terms with death. - GMANews.TV